


commit to memory this path afire (a tale of symphony and rhyme)

by Lire_Casander



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Angst, Crash Fest 2019, Explicit Language, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Minor Max Evans/Liz Ortecho, Physical Abuse, Roswellprompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-07
Updated: 2019-07-07
Packaged: 2020-06-07 18:35:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,468
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19474963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: you came to me in a crash landingbreathed back into life by fireeyes locked to mine, gaze scaldingour hearts consumed in the pyrewatch as my soul sets out to findthe way to flare in this bonfirewar forgotten, this spark alightscommit to memory this path afire





	commit to memory this path afire (a tale of symphony and rhyme)

**Author's Note:**

> **[beta]** Wonderful [estel_willow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/estel_willow). Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
>  **[prompt]** _Two: Michael & Alex, sharing music. Just, the two of them being passionate about music and playing their favourite songs for each other. Music as a love language sort of deal._
> 
>  **[disclaimer]** I do not own the characters nor the lines that you might recognize. They are The CW's and the show writers'. I do not own the songs featured as the intertitles. They are, in chronological order, _Undertow_ by Mid West Kings, _The Ghost Of You_ by My Chemical Romance, _Revelry_ by Kings of Leon, _Silenced By The Night_ by Keane, and _Almost (Sweet Music)_ by Hozier. The last song is _Path Afire_ , by yours truly, only lyrics and no music.
> 
>  **[dedication]** First and foremost, I hope you like this, V (@bisexualguerin)! Thanks for such incredible prompts, and sorry I couldn’t fit them all in one story. I may have gotten a bit carried away about it, and I am aware that it deviates greatly from the original prompt, but I really really wish you enjoy reading it as much as I’ve enjoyed writing it. It was such a ride, and one I am glad to have taken, even if it’s been hard sometimes.
> 
>  **[lire's notes]** This wouldn’t have been finished without the great support system that I am lucky enough to have for myself. Thanks to Serena for her help and support with the original lyrics in this story. Thanks to MJ and Meagn for their endless support when I bitched about writer’s block. And very special thanks to Hannah for her hand holding, her wonderful insight on every little thing about this fic, and her infinite faith in me. I would have never finished this without you.
> 
>  **[playlist]** If any of you is interested in the 4+ hours of music I listened to while writing this, please feel free to DM me over at [tumblr](https://lire-casander.tumblr.com) and I'll be more than happy to share it with you.

**_to pass the time, i make armies from a box of matches and with a strike i could play god, and in a sulfur sting, it proves to be much harder with the water rushing in_ **  
**[fall. 2002]**

Michael Guerin's just turned eleven when the lady from the Social Services comes to visit him, a week after Hank Guerin's had the car accident and Michael's left alone in the trailer that has been his home for the past year and a half. The lady, a middle-aged, blonde woman in cat glasses, smells like sandalwood and speaks like she’s talking to a small child. 

Michael wants to scream at her that he doesn’t need her help, hasn't needed it for the whole week it's taken them to realize that there was a kid left alone in a trailer in the middle of the desert in Santa Fe. He remembers the manners Hank taught him once, when he'd been sober enough not to hit him with a wobbly fist, and instead of interrupting Michael nods curtly to everything she says, answering her questions whenever he's asked. 

"Is there anything you need you know?" she asks softly, looking at him with a caring glint in her dark eyes. 

Michael quickly replays what he’s been told, and he finds her speech has lacked a few bits of information. Michael clears his throat and asks in a low voice, "Where am I being taken to?" 

"For now, to a group home until we find a suitable family for you." 

"Where's that group home?" he dares to question, his voice quavering at the mere thought of being sent to the same place he lived in between the meth-heads and Hank. He’s seen and experienced things he vowed never to go through again. 

"Back in Roswell," she assures him. "It's the same group home you stayed in after being found in the desert."

Michael nods again, processing the information. Roswell means the twins – if they're still there – it means closer to where they're from, the place he can hope to be found and taken back to where he belongs. His heart starts beating so forcefully that he almost misses the lady's following question. 

"Is there anything else you need to pack?" she’s saying. "We can help you with your clothes and your belongings." 

Michael hesitates for a second, not daring to ask for permission. The lady senses his doubt and smiles sweetly at him, gently and silently encouraging him to speak. 

"Can I take the guitar?" He gestures toward the instrument that's propped against one of the flimsy walls. 

The lady's smile doesn’t falter as she nods. "Of course you can, darling."

Michael doesn’t miss a beat as he saunters to grasp the guitar, not caring about the rest of things he needs to take with him back to the place where it all began. 

The blur of people talking to him, grabbing bags and helping him to pack and move out of the trailer in Santa Fe and into the group home in Roswell, remains a cloud in his mind as he mildly registers the motions. His left hand never lets go of the guitar’s neck, an anchor in the stormy ocean his life has been ever since he first set foot on Earth.

The group home is nothing like he remembers from his first time, but his memory's been trampled by time and distance. Michael lies in a bunk bed for the first few days, and nobody bothers him out of his hiding place unless it’s for eating. But by the time the third week rolls around, he’s dragged out of the group home and into a yellow school bus with a sign on the front that reads _Assurance Home_. He’s forced to leave his guitar underneath the bed, tucked away for safety in a ragged case, laden with a backpack full of notebooks and pencils and a promise of _normalcy_. All the trip, he looks out of the window and daydreams of music and tunes and notes, dancing around in his head as he taps the inside of his left wrist with his right index. When the bus brakes screech to a halt in front of an old looking building flashing _Mesa Middle School_ , Michael holds his breath. The assistant coaxes them out of the bus and bides them farewell with the promise of a ride back “home” when the school day is over.

Michael doesn’t know what _home_ is anymore.

He feels something flare into life in the back of his mind, like a beacon in the middle of the night, when he sets foot into the halls of the building. For four years it has been throbbing dull, like a gaping wound never properly healed; the reason why he turned to music in the first place when Hank offered him the chance to learn a few tricks with his fingers over the strings. He’s wanted to make that pain go away, quiet in a way nothing else could. It worked for the most part, but walking through the glass doors and being sent to the Principal’s office for directions on his first school day makes the wound reopen. He’s flooded with feelings that he can’t identify, as though they don’t belong to him but deep inside he recognizes them.

“Michael Guerin, right?” the Principal asks, glasses low on the bridge of her nose as she tries to infuse some warmth in her words as she sets down what he supposes is his file. The plate on top of the papers reads _Mrs. Appleby_ in carved letters on silver. “Welcome to Mesa Middle School. I’m really hoping that you’ll settle in easily.”

Michael nods distractedly, his head about to explode with the throbbing and the painful sting. He misses her next few words, instead focusing on the pictures behind her desk, peppered around the bookshelves. He leans in, interested in one of the frames, showing some students at what qualifies for a music room in his short experience.

“Is there anything you want to ask, Michael?” she says gently, leaving the file on the desk and lacing her fingers together. “You can ask anything that’s on your mind, son.”

“Is there somewhere I can play music?” he blurts out. 

If she’s surprised by his question, she doesn’t let it show. “There’s a music room where students can go play, and we have a great music program if you want to join.”

He nods, suddenly interested, leaning forward, hands untangling from his lap and reaching out to be placed on top of the desk. “Could I?”

“Of course, Michael!” Mrs. Appleby says joyfully. “Wait a second,” she fumbles in her drawer until she finds a paper and hands it to him. “You have to fill in this form, but I’ll talk to Mr. Thompson, the music teacher. I’m sure there’s a place for you. Why don’t you go to the music room after lunch?”

He nods eagerly, the promise of tunes and quiet bubbling in his mind, forlorn the fear he had felt previously. If he can have music, then he can find a safe place for him to center himself and become calm. Maybe he can silence the chaos he lives in, permanently.

A few moments later Michael leaves the office with a promise of entering a program where he might be able to learn music, a hopeful spring in his stance as he walks through the halls accompanied by one of the clerks. He’s shown where his locker is, and then he’s led to his first Math class at Mesa Middle School. As he approaches the closed door, the clerk gently pulling him through the hallway, Michael’s head threatens to explode into millions of shreds. The throbbing intensifies and he has to stop dead in his tracks, hands up to his temples as he massages the skin in a feeble attempt to make it stop aching.

“Are you okay, kid?” the clerk says, soft fingers running through his curls. 

“Yes,” he pants. “I just-today I have a headache. It just doesn’t go away.”

“Take it easy, then,” he’s patted on the shoulder and gently pushed towards the door. “We can wait a bit until you feel ready.”

“No, no,” he pleads, the pain dulling a bit as he inhales deeply. “Is that my class?”

“It is,” the clerk knocks on the door. “This is Mrs. Harrell’s class. You’ll be alright here, you’ll see.”

Michael nods once, hands finally settling by his sides as the teacher opens the door and smiles down at him. She’s got brown eyes behind frameless glasses, and a glint of compassion in her wide smile. “You must be Michael Guerin,” she says as greeting. When he nods again, she thanks the clerk and ushers him into the classroom. “Class,” she says as Michael stands in front of all the students neatly seated in rows, but he’s looking down at his shoes, spotting a streak of mud that makes him shudder. “This is Michael Guerin, he came to Roswell a few weeks ago, and today it’s his first day of school here. I’m sure you’re all going to make him feel welcome. Michael, please go sit down by the back of the class. We’ll find a more suitable seat for you if you don’t like it there.”

Finally Michael looks up, and he feels as if his head has actually been split open in half, a rush of feelings that are not his spreading through his thoughts, invading every inch of space. A voice, incredulous and thin, finding its way through the chaos, _is it really you?_ , and then he sees her, blonde, tall and beautiful, sitting at the front, looking at him with wide eyes and a blank face. By her side, a rumpled brunette is staring at him too, a frown upon his brows as though he’s trying to understand. And even if he doesn’t know their names now, because they were separated before they could understand how this new world worked, Michael is sure he’s found his siblings by some sheer streak of fortune.

“Hi,” she says, standing up and earning herself an encouraging nod from Mrs Harrell. “My name’s Isobel. Welcome to Roswell, Michael.”

He has to tame down the urge to pull her into an embrace. The ache in his head stopped the moment she entered his mind, and the relief is so great he feels he could cry. Michael feels like he can’t express outwardly any emotion, given that he senses that no one links him to the kid found along with the twins on that deserted road on a hot August night four years before – he hasn’t been asked about coming back to Roswell, and definitely nobody has referred to the infamous night they were found. So he nods his head in acknowledgement, his mind screaming _yeah it’s me it’s me it’s me I’ve found you I can’t believe it we have so much to talk about how have you been_ , as he strolls past her and her twin and flops down onto a chair at the back of the room.

He opens his backpack and takes out the black notebook and the pencil case he’s been given at the group house. He’s rummaging through the case in search of a black pen when Mrs. Harrell begin stalking once again, but he isn’t paying her that much attention. There’s noise in his head, dulled a bit by the presence of the twin heads on the front row – although they haven’t turned around since he passed by their side – and then there’s a strange pull that forces a shiver down his spine.

“Hey,” he hears at his left. He turns around and meets black eyes that dive into his soul. “Welcome. I’m Alex, Alex Manes.”

“Michael Guerin,” he replies softly. There’s a need, deep down, urging him to reach out and brush his fingers through Alex Manes’ black hair that’s spiking everywhere. He forces it back to where it came from and swallows. What he can’t fight is the impulse to get to know Alex Manes better – he doesn’t know why, but he feels he can trust him.

“Please be quiet,” Mrs. Harrell says, stopping them from talking any more. “Let’s start today with the multiplication of fractions that we left half-explained yesterday.”

Michael tunes out Mrs. Harrell’s voice a little, pen – finally found at the bottom of the pencil case – in his hand dribbling the circle symbol that always comes to mind whenever he’s feeling weird. He already knows everything she’s explaining: he once read the whole textbook for sixth grade at the library when he was with the couple who cooked meth in their kitchen instead of food, one day he was bored out of his mind and had already finished his schoolwork. The classes shuffle before him, dragging out in a numbing blur of data and information, until it’s lunchtime and he can get a break from being the new kid in town.

The other students run out of the classroom, fighting jokingly to be the first in line at the canteen, but Michael remains seated. By the front board, hovering over the desks, both Isobel and her twin brother are feigning being slow in gathering their belongings. Mrs. Harrell tells them gently to leave for lunch, Isobel nodding but keeping her pace in checking all her text books before placing them inside her pink backpack. Michael can't wait to be left alone with them, his soul calling out, attuned to their frequency. The moment Mrs. Harrell steps out of the classroom, Isobel is turning around and there's a flash of light thundering inside of his mind, a voice supplying a name to go to the face of a boy he hasn't grown up with, _Max Max Max_ , as he's tackled and smashed against warmth and laughter.

“So, Michael, huh?” Max asks curiously, stepping back and smiling broadly. “I’m so glad you’re finally here.”

“I’m glad to be back,” he says sincerely, and it’s the truest truth he’s ever spoken.

Isobel glances between the two of them before nodding curtly to herself and picking her bag up from the floor. “Let’s go have lunch,” she suggests. “I can’t wait to hear all the stories you have to tell, Michael. I can’t believe we got our brother back!”

“Brother?” he asks frowning. He’s never had any siblings, never felt the pull of belonging to anyone else apart from the twins, and even then it was out of protectiveness rather than family ties. But maybe he doesn’t really know how family feels like; for all he knows, this can be what his family looks like. 

“Yeah, _brother_ ,” Isobel reassures him, reaching out and grabbing his wrist. “You’re family, Michael.”

He grins at her words, and allows her to manhandle him throughout the school to the canteen to have lunch together, the first of many. He can’t believe his luck when he sees the whole buffet spread in front of him, and he actually has some money to pay for it for the first time in _years_ , so he kind of goes wild and ends up hoarding a lot of food – the obvious sign of someone who has gone through so many deprivations that the smallest chance they get at being nourished, they wind up greedy for more. Isobel glances at him from underneath her long lashes, a look in her eyes that glints dangerously towards pity, but she doesn’t say anything.

"So," Michael begins once they're all settled at the farthest table they could find, "tell me more about your poster lives." 

"But we want to know about you," Isobel whines, elbowing an oblivious Max who's got his nose in a book he's taken out the moment they're seated while he idly forks his salad. "Don't we?" 

"Huh?" Max looks up, disoriented, "Yeah, yeah. Isobel's right, we want to know where you've been and the adventures you've had. We stayed here, bored and fed up for the longest time." 

"I swear, Max, I don't know where you get those weird wordings," Isobel laughs before pointing towards Michael with a baby carrot. "Now, tell us. Where have you been? _How_ are you?" 

Michael hesitates for a second, taking in the twins sitting across the table – Isobel's designer backpack, Max’s brand new sweater with no holes in it, the way they talk as though they have grown up visiting some sort of golf club every Sunday after mass. Maybe they have. 

He has been brought up by meth-heads and drunken abusers, he hasn't had time for ballet or football or basketball or even getting inside a library for long enough to actually memorize a book without having to steal it. His shelves at the group home are a testimony of his ways into culture, a foray Isobel and Max haven't needed to take. 

He chooses to share simply the funniest stories, leaving out the goriest details – the long sleepless nights, the pain a lit joint can cause against smooth skin, the flexibility managed after weeks of dodging empty beer bottles aimed at him. Around a mouthful of rice, he begins talking, swallowing his pride along with the food while he speaks about the less horrific experiences he's been through. 

For the look on Isobel's face, the less burdened memories are still too much to accept. "I _am_ fine," he reassures Isobel once he's done describing his shenanigans. "I promise you, from now on, everything's going to be fine. We're together now, and we can find a way back home." 

Max glances at him with a bewildered expression in his brown eyes. "This is home, Michael," he sighs. "We're not going anywhere. Mom and dad love us. They'll get to love you too." 

Michael opens his mouth to retaliate, but the bell rings in the distance, and Isobel's getting up, half of her salad forgotten on the tray. "I need to get going!" she announces. "Don't want to be late to Mr. Clark's workshop today!" 

"Do you want me to accompany you to your next class?" Max offers, pushing his book back into his bag. "I’ve got Lit now, but I can help you get wherever you need to be." 

Michael remembers Mrs. Appleby's words distinctly, convincing him to try their music program. "Do you know where the music room is?" 

Max nods, and leads the way through the canteen and into the halls, diving towards the door that's labeled _Music Hall_ , by the back of the third corridor they walk together. "Here you are," he smiles. "I really gotta go now, but it's fantastic to have you back so near, Michael. It feels like we're whole, somehow." 

"Iz's right, you know?" Michael replies, swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat. "You use really funny words." Max shakes his head at his words, looking amused, and bumps his fist into Michael’s shoulder before starting to walk away.

He’s just taken a few steps away when he comes to a halt abruptly, as though he’s just realized something. He turns around only to see Michael hovering outside the door, trying to decide whether or not actually open it. “Why don’t you come with us to the Crashdown later?” he offers as Michael frowns. “The Crashdown is the diner we usually go after school. It’s Liz’s family’s. It’s fun.”

Michael sighs slightly. “I don’t think I can. The group home sends a bus for us after school. But I could ask, for another day,” he adds quickly when he sees Max beginning to look crestfallen. “I’m sure they’ll allow me to go. They’re really cool.”

“Great then. I can’t wait!”

Michael watches as Max – his _brother_ – walks away to Literature, and he waits until he’s alone in the hallway to place his hand on the knob. He still isn’t sure about wanting to share his special relationship with music with the rest of the world; until the very moment he was sent back to Roswell, music was something he enjoyed in the solitude of his own room at Hank’s trailer. Music was solace and a safe haven. It always felt oddly intimate and a lot like coming home. He’s still hesitating in front of the closed door when he hears footsteps, and although he tries to remove his hand from the doorknob, he’s not fast enough.

“Having second thoughts?” says a voice at his back. Michael shivers a bit when he recognizes the voice before turning around. He faces the boy he shared his first few classes with, black backpack dangling from one shoulder and a bunch of sheets peeping out of a well-used folder. “Alex Manes, remember?” he adds, outstretching his hand. As a reflex, Michael shakes it.

“Michael Guerin.”

“I know,” Alex smiles. “I guess it’s hard, your first day here. It is pretty big. I remember my first day here, but my brothers showed me around. I could help you, too?”

Michael swallows, his gaze back to the closed door. He doesn’t say anything – he doesn’t trust his own voice not to quiver whenever this boy is involved. And it’s a funny feeling, one he wants to keep forever but also one he doesn’t know how to shake off.

“Do you want to come in?” Alex offers, bright smile reaching his eyes as he balances the folder in his arms with his swinging backpack. “I was about to. Today’s freestyle, so it’s the perfect moment if you want to try.”

“Freestyle?” Michael repeats, feeling stupid. 

“Today there’s no class, just us playing our instruments and singing and even writing our own songs. Mr. Thompson thinks it’s good for our creativity.” Alex hasn’t stopped smiling, and Michael feels drawn to the warmth emanating from him.

“I think I could try,” he accepts, his own smile creeping out of him.

“Cool!” The other boy motions for him to open the door. “Come on in, I can show you the song I’m working on. I only have a few chords, and I’m still figuring out the lyrics, but we can work together on it.”

Michael steps behind Alex into the room, which is silent as no other student has arrived yet. They leave their bags on the floor, and Alex gives him one of the guitars, picking up a Spanish guitar for himself. “These are the guitars you can play if you don’t have one,” he explains, caressing the wood of the instrument currently sitting on his lap. “This one’s mine. My mom gave it to me last year as a birthday gift.” He plucks at some strings, sounds filling up the air.

Michael follows, his own fingers over the frets as he just gets himself lost in music.

**_and all the wounds that are ever gonna scar me, for all the ghosts that are never gonna catch me, if i fall, if i fall down at the end of the world_**  
**[winter. 2004]**

The second Christmas break without his mother doesn’t lessen the pain of having lost her. Alex spends half the holidays hiding from his father by holing up in the tool shed behind the main building and locking himself in his room with the guitar his mother gave to him as the only proof that she ever existed. 

He manages to avoid chaos by plucking at the strings and singing softly to himself in his half self-imposed, half forced retirement from the outer world. He writes a dozen lyrics that he dismisses two or three lines in. He composes melodies that sing a chorus of despair and abandonment; he rips the pages from his pentagram notebook and balls them up in his fists. He only wants the pain to leave him alone, but everything he ever does to chase it away collides with the reality of being the only disappointment under his father's gaze.

He’s already used to the tantrums and the open hands collapsing into the wall mere inches from where he's resting his head. He’s used to wearing long-sleeved t-shirts even during the hottest days of the New Mexican summer heatwave. It took him a while to understand that his father had found out what Alex himself had been still figuring out, but when he finally caught up with the news that his father was punishing him because of his sexual orientation, Alex had felt both relieved and terrified – relieved because he hadn't done anything to earn the hatred, and terrified because his father hated him for what he was. It would have been easier to endure the belt on his skin or the boot edging on his side if the reason had been a crime he’d committed, for he would have been able to correct his mistakes and move on. 

Being hated for what he couldn’t change became a whole new form of torture nobody had ever warned him about. 

His older brothers are back home for a few days by the end of the holidays; Alex thinks that with them around his father might stop his lessons on how to become a Manes man, taught with bloody knuckles and snarky remarks. He is mistaken – the presence of Patrick and Kieran does nothing to appease their father’s anger. If anything, it fuels the verbal violence, because they have achieved success in pursuing a military career just like they were meant to, just like every Manes child is meant to, and Alex is left to fend for himself while his brothers step aside, one by one, as Jesse Manes becomes the stranger Alex used to look up to, once.

However, he isn’t looking forward to the end of the break. For it means coming back to school, and things at Roswell High aren’t exactly brighter for him either. Sure, he gets to hang out with Liz and Maria, and with Rosa if she’s not too busy screwing Frederico or skipping classes to smoke pot on the bleachers where everyone could see her. He feels sheltered when they’re around – protected in ways only friends turned family can manage. But there are places the girls can’t go; Alex fears the changing rooms with a passion he’s only shown while writing music, because he’s on his own in there, and the monsters don’t only inhabit his closet at home.

The first day of school, Alex hesitates outside the door, bag dangling from one shoulder as his hand rakes through his black hair. He’s been trying to let it grow longer, to make a difference, to challenge his father. To escape the fate of all Manes men. So far, it’s only granted him a purple bruise that roams in between his shoulders, right below the neck of his clothing – his father is nothing but discreet, always punishing him where no one else can see. He fiddles with the hem of the black band t-shirt he’s wearing, deciding whether or not he should skip PE and go straight to the music room.

He gets no say on his own near future when a hand slaps onto his shoulder blade, hitting the sorest spot of them all, and making Alex flinch. “Why so thoughtful, Manes?” he hears at his back, Kyle’s voice full of the derisive snarl that’s now his life motto. “Can’t decide if you’re ogling Jackson or Pieterman first? Or maybe it is someone else?”

“Don’t you get tired of sounding like a broken record, Valenti?” he can’t help but reply. Usually he wouldn’t even acknowledge the words, but if this Christmas break has taught him anything, it’s that he has to be his own savior, because not even the people who are supposed to shelter him are actually doing a good job out of it.

Still, the way the last name rolls in his tongue stings enough to make him shudder. There was a time when everything was simpler, easier – there were endless nights joking around a firepit a few steps away from the Valenti’s hunting cabin, there were bright days building a treehouse where they could escape the world and just exist together. But there’s no point in dwelling in a past that’s turned out to dust and shame. Alex has to fight his own battles now, even if they’re meant to be against the only person who used to know him inside and out.

Maybe that’s why it’s so easy for Kyle to find the cracks in the armor Alex wears every day to school – the hints that scream of vulnerability and fear – and always applies enough pressure on the wounds to make them bleed. Although he’s already fed up with the whole situation, and he would _kill_ to have his best friend back, Alex knows not even a time-turner out of a Harry Potter reverie can fix whatever broke between them all those months back, when they were sitting inside the tree house, sharing a soda and snickering about the kids at school. Alex thinks he’ll never know for sure what finally drove Kyle away – whether it was the dawning realization that Alex’s gaze lingered longer on the male models on the magazines instead of the half-dressed women, or the ever telling stamps of a fist printed somewhere throughout Alex’s body. Or maybe it was the confession voiced through almost tears, that one last night at the cabin, while they were both sharing a room with twins beds and one night stand between them.

Maybe Kyle thinks that being friends with Alex might rub off him some of his weirdness, and that’s why he’s become the monster that haunts Alex through the halls at school. As if Alex doesn’t have enough of his own monsters walking outside the closet in his own house.

The shove that follows Kyle retaliation pushes him against the door. Alex tries to hold back the whimper that threatens to escape his lips as his bruised right arm hits the wood. He fails.

“Don’t you dare get cocky with me, Manes,” Kyle growls. “Do you hear me, faggot?”

The words hurt Alex more than he cares to admit – Kyle’s the only person he’s ever told about how he feels, before their friendship got strained to a point of no return, and his reaction has prevented Alex from telling anyone else, not even Liz and Maria as of yet, out of fear that they’d turn their backs on him as well. And now that Liz is beginning to moon over Kyle for some unfathomable reason, Alex knows he’s going to stay in the figurative closet for as long as it’s safe inside.

“Are you talking to yourself again, Valenti?” he fires back, eliciting another growl from Kyle, who pushes him harder against the closed door. 

Alex would have kept going, retaliating to every shove and push Kyle throws his way, but the halls are starting to film up with students and the bullies have never been known for showing their violent streak in public. Instead, Kyle spins him around, something close to hatred in the eyes that once looked down at Alex with pride and _love_. He wishes, not for the first time, that he didn't know what it feels like to be on Kyle's side, because it wouldn’t ache as much to be aware of the sting of his hands pulling and hurting and shoving and scratching bloody lines across his bare arms. 

"Not so brave now, huh?" Alex snarls, hands balling into fists at his side. For as much of a coward he is whenever his father is involved, he knows he can stand his ground against Kyle. 

Whatever Kyle's mind can plan on doing to him, it can't keep pace with the horrors he's been undergoing at home. 

With one last deprecating look down at him, Kyle walks away, pride in his stride while his backpack keeps swinging at his back. Alex wipes his mouth where he’s bitten down too hard and now there’s a split spot and blood is oddly flowing. He watches as Kyle meets with his new friends by the end of the hallway, next to their lockers, and all of a sudden there’s a riot as Kyle tries to close his locker only for the door to bounce back awkwardly and hit him square in the face. Kyle is complaining loudly, but a fake cough next to him makes Alex focus on the person who’s stepped up beside him instead of on his bully.

“Seems like Valenti’s been defeated by his own locker,” Michael Guerin jokes, showing up out of nowhere, books piled up in his arms. 

Alex doesn’t want to address the fact that he’s enjoying watching as Kyle gets beaten by a rebel locker, so he changes subjects, not before chuckling a bit at himself when Kyle finally gets a hold of the door and closes it forcefully. Instead, he shakes his head and smiles back to the boy who's already brushing past him. Michael Guerin walks towards whatever class he has now, leaving Alex staring at his back while wondering what had just happened.

Michael Guerin is a mystery. Alex has seen him around school, following the Evans twins like a lost puppy. He's seen the way too big clothes hang off his back, and how he always seem to hide something in his step, as if it hurts him to walk in his own skin. 

Alex knows a lot about that, too. 

He finally musters up enough courage to open the door to the changing room and flops down onto a bench, closing his eyes. He knows he's alone for now; even if Kyle has been bullying him about it, there's still a solid ten to fifteen minutes before anyone else enters the changing room for their PE class. Alex decides to change into his shorts and one of his brothers' training shirts, so he reaches into the bag, but instead of touching fabric his fingers feel paper. He blinks, opening the zip wider and staring right into the bag, where a folded piece of paper is neatly placed on top of his clothes. Alex picks it up, unfolds it and his breath catches in his throat. 

In a messy, barely put together handwriting, there are words glaring up at him. It takes Alex a second to understand the scribbling, familiar in a weird way – as though whoever had written it hadn't wanted Alex to discover their identity – but when he makes out the words, they fit seamlessly into the melody he's spent the last three years trying to write. The melody he only has written four or five chords for, always distracted by one thing or the other – homework, lack of inspiration, his mother leaving, his father finding yet another spot to taint. 

_I wanna grow old with you_  
_I wanna sing all my songs to you_

Alex thought he’d been discreet about that song, not telling anyone openly about it, just working on it here and there, during the odd hours he could find the music room empty enough to be comfortable for him to pull out his guitar and strum a bit. Now, with those lyrics scribbled on paper and the musical notes noted over them, he realizes there had been another person listening all along. 

Warmth spreads through him as he folds the paper once again and tucks it into a secret pocket inside the bag. He will try out those later, when he finds a moment to sneak into the music room and snatch the guitar he left there at the beginning of the school year. 

A month and a half later, Alex has found two more notes – one inside his locker and the other in between his Algebra notes – but he's not closer to developing the song. He has six lines, written by an unknown hand, but not a single follow up melody to go along. He thinks that maybe today might be a good day to start working on it again. 

He has PE but there's no way he's changing into anything short-sleeved today. There's a bruised blooming purple from his right shoulder blade down to his wrist, and a scar has begun puckering from his hip to his ankle, a souvenir from his father's hands pushing him hard against a table full of tools back in the shed behind his house. There are so many things that can scar skin, and Alex is slowly getting acquaintanced with some of them. 

Instead of heading towards the changing rooms, Alex finds his way to the music room, fingers firmly gripping the strands of his bag as he cruises the hallways. He hopes the room is empty, but when he reaches for the knob and turns it, music floods out of the open door. It sounds like just a guitar and someone humming some pop melody as fingers strum strings. The music comes to a halt as Alex enters, but he soon finds out it's not because of him. 

Michael Guerin is hunched over a guitar, taking notes on a pentagram notebook, biting down onto his lower lip as he scribbles. He doesn’t look up until Alex clears his throat, and then Guerin flinches, looking like a deer caught in lights. 

"Morning," Alex greets, walking into the room and closing the door behind him. "Skipping class?" 

"I could say the same about you," Guerin counteracts, scrambling to get his things together. "I was just leaving."

"No, you weren't," Alex calls him out on his lie. "I didn't want to disturb you. Maybe we could both stay here? I promise not to be a bother." 

Guerin frowns at him, assessing his situation for a second before deciding he can stay, and flopping down on the seat he'd been sitting onto. "I was just messing around." 

"It sounded good," Alex praises as he grabs his guitar from the deck and suits down near Guerin. "You’re good at this." 

"Music is simple," Guerin states, rubbing the back of his neck before placing the guitar on his lap again. "But I'm not as good as you are." 

Alex wants to say something, but his eyes are trained to the pentagram notebook, and he has to catch himself before reaching out to grab it. 

The handwriting is exactly the same as the one on the notes he's been finding out – messy, scrawly and tilting to the right on the _t_ s. He’s at a loss for words – at a loss for breath too – while he weighs his options. He could point it out, call Guerin out on his actions. He could ignore it altogether. He could step back outside and forget all about this weird exchange.

"I have been working on something," he finally says after a beat. Guerin's gaze is glued to his own hands on the strings, so Alex thinks he hasn't noticed the pause. Guerin has this tendency to space out. "Maybe you could help me with it?" he offers. 

He doesn’t expect Guerin to actually accept, but he doesn’t even hesitate. Alex smiles and spreads some sheets in front of them for writing down ideas and chords. 

Alex had forgotten how it felt to make music. Michael Guerin, of all people, is the one to remind him that music is a way to fly. 

They snicker and write and play and sing, although Guerin is an awful singer. He hits all the wrong notes, and by the end of their little music session it's clear to Alex that he isn’t always doing it on purpose. Michael Guerin is capable of many things, but singing isn’t one of them. His lack of suitable voice for singing isn’t an obstacle for him making music – he has a way with chords that Alex wishes for himself, and Alex knows he can learn a lot from the boy sitting across the room with a guitar propped against slender body. 

It's hard for him not to stare at Michael Guerin. It's hard not to reach out and touch the patch of skin that peeks out underneath the grey, worn out shirt. It's hard not to lean into his personal space, as though Guerin is a star and Alex’s just a satellite orbiting around him. 

Guerin closes his eyes when he hits a particularly high note on the guitar, the tip of his tongue caught between his teeth. Alex finds himself fascinated by the pink flushing Guerin's cheeks, knowing there's a similar, telltale flush on his own face. 

Forone moment, they lock gazes, fingers over strings and frets, feet tapping the floor following a rhythm that's not only in their minds. The world disappears for a heartbeat, and Alex feels the ground shattering open underneath him. There's a strength warring in Guerin's eyes, fighting to be unleashed. Alex surprises himself wishing it was him who got to witness the unbearable force of the train wreck he knows Michael Guerin is – he wishes to be the one to tame the wildness in those eyes, only to release it so they both could be swept off their feet with the sheer force of feelings he still doesn’t quite comprehend. 

The bell rings, startling them out of their music induced haze. Alex shakes himself while Guerin is already on his feet, scrambling for his bag and a notebook that's spilled from it. "I have to get going," he excuse himself. "Don't wanna be late to Algebra." 

Alex watches him as Guerin saunters out of the room. He remains seated a few seconds longer before sighing, shaking his head and gathering his belongings. He has Literature to attend to. 

Their shared music sessions expand throughout winter. They never talk about the reasons behind them skipping their classes – Alex never asks about what’s Guerin hiding from, and he surely doesn’t get any questions coming from the other boy. They just make music together, and if some days Alex shows up with a bigger bruise on his arm, or a gash on his cheek from a forced encounter with Valenti’s fists, Guerin never mentions it. On those days, though, Guerin silently offers him a pick and allows Alex to choose whatever he wants to work on – progressive harmonies, the newest emo song on the radio, or his own tunes.

Alex reciprocates whenever Guerin enters the room with a noticeable limp, or looking like he hasn’t slept for days, or when he clutches his arms protectively around his own body as though they are armor against whatever evil rules his world. Alex never asks, never questions. He just wishes they weren’t bound to understand each other over the fading purples of their bruised souls.

“See you tomorrow for the field trip?” Alex asks casually one Wednesday as he straps his backpack and gets ready to head out to his own Algebra class. 

“I don’t think I’m going,” Guerin answers, head low and shoulders hunched as he tries to keep all his belongings inside his own bag. “Have lots of things to study, can’t afford a day out.”

“It’s kinda mandatory, you know?” Alex reminds him. “Also, you’ve got, like, the best grades of us all.”

“I still don’t know if I’m going,” Guerin repeats stubbornly. Alex doesn’t want to pry further, but he also doesn’t want to drop the issue, because deep down, even if he doesn’t understand it, he _needs_ Guerin to come on the field trip to the desert.

“I was hoping maybe we could bring out the guitars, have some fun out there playing music,” he offers. Guerin shrugs and makes a non-committal noise that sounds so much like _I’ll think about it_. Alex can’t really stay any longer if he doesn’t want to risk getting detention from Mrs. Lopes. He waves goodbye to Guerin as he exits the music room in a rush, the bell ringing for the second time, and he makes it just in time to flop down his seat a second before Mrs. Lopes enters the classroom and closes the door in one swift movement. 

When he shows up the next morning, almost late because he couldn’t find the right shirt to cover all the bruises on his arms, Guerin is already standing near the school bus, guitar strapped across his back, looking shy and bashful. Alex smiles brightly and motions for him to hop into the bus. There are a couple of free spots by the front, so Alex flops down onto one of the seats by the window and Guerin folds his frame into the one close to Alex’s.

There’s something about the desert air that helps Alex feel free. Whenever he looks at Guerin, while they are sitting on a rock after having spent the whole morning picking up dust and stashing it away for some lab research, he knows Guerin feels the same. They share small smiles and shoulder bumps here and there, Liz shoots them weird glances whenever she manages to catch Alex’s eye. He doesn’t care.

At some point after eating their sandwiches under the cool desert air, he decides it’s time for them to share some music. He reaches for the guitar he’s set propped up against one of the rocks, and can feel the rest of their classmates surrounding them as Guerin lays his hands on the neck of his own guitar. Alex strums a few chords, hums a few lines of melody, but that’s all. It still feels enough – to have Guerin so close he can _feel_ his heat, which is higher than another human being Alex has been close to.

Neither of them notices Maria producing her camera and snapping a couple of pictures.

He doesn’t see Guerin until lunch break on Monday the following week. He manages to eat half his lunch at a table by the back of the canteen, surrounded by Maria and Liz, before a ruckus by the other side of the place catches his attention. There’s laughter and there’s music, and he’d recognize the sound of that guitar – the sound of those fingers scraping strings. He’s been listening to them plucking out tunes for months now.

Guerin is sitting on a bench, Isobel Evans standing close to him while Max Evans just tries his best to read what looks like a boring narrative Russian book. Guerin’s playing guitar, his face completely relaxed, eyes closed as if he’s lost in the moment. Alex can’t help to bounce his head to the sound, and before he knows it he’s beginning to sing the lyrics, first softly, and then, when Guerin picks up his pace, Alex begins singing louder.

Guerin opens his eyes when Alex’s voice carries over the space, and he catches Alex’s eye. For a moment, Alex freezes, the words heavy on his tongue, and he skips a whole line, but Guerin’s still looking at him as though there’s no one else in the whole world, and that gives him the strength to carry on.

He ends the last note a bit longer than expected, and the whole hall erupts in cheers and applause. Alex manages to duck out before everyone gets too handsy – he can already feel Kyle’s eyes on him as he retreats off the canteen. He doesn’t need any more bullying for showing off his voice the way he knows can take an audience’s breath away. Maria and Liz follow hot on his heels.

The Crashdown Cafe is bursting with people when the group enters through the door, after classes, searching for a free booth. Arturo waves them from the counter, and Rosa shows them to the usual spot where Liz, Maria and Alex tend to spend the afternoons studying. Alex flops down onto the seat, bag forgotten on the floor, as Maria laughs heartily. 

“That was fun!” she cries out, hands drawing circles on the table surface. “We all got to listen to you sing, which is always great.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me of that,” Alex smiles softly. He’s perusing the menu, even though he knows it by heart already, trying to dismiss his overeager best friend. “I don’t know what got into me.”

“You love singing,” Liz points out. Rosa has already approached their table with an order of fries and their favorite milkshakes, so Alex feels there’s no need for him to keep hiding behind the menu. 

“That, I do,” Alex chuckles. His skin still prickles where Guerin touched it, back in the desert, goosebumps still rising whenever he thinks about it. 

“I didn’t know Guerin could play guitar that good,” Maria muses, biting a fry as she watches Alex dip his into his milkshake. “Ugh, that’s disgusting, and you know it.”

Alex’s about to throw a witty comeback her way when the door opens again and the Evans twins and Michael Guerin enter the café. “Speaking of the devil,” Maria says. Liz blushes when Max Evans greets them from afar. “I have something for you,” she chirps. Alex frowns as Maria searches her purse. “Here it is!” she says cheerfully, shoving a piece of paper his way.

Alex glances down at the paper – a picture of him and Guerin, from their field trip. He’s wearing his black sweater, Guerin’s wearing a grey one and a black hoodie. Alex is playing, and there’s a glint of something _pure_ in the way Guerin’s looking at him. Alex finds himself smiling softly at the photograph.

“Can I keep it?” he asks stupidly.

“Of course, silly! I printed it for you!” Maria dismisses his grateful speech with a wave of her hand. 

“Thanks,” he whispers, suddenly aware of what he has to do. He knows he can’t take that picture home with him in case his father finds out and starts thinking about things that aren’t real. There’s just one thing he can do with it, and it can come up as payback for all the help he’s been having these past months.

He knows Guerin has felt the connection, the pull whenever they’re close, the way gravity forces them into the same space in time. He knows he can’t act on it, because he’s pretty sure Guerin is more interested in Isobel Evans than in him, but he still can gift him with a piece of memory.

He excuses himself, muttering about having to go to the bathroom, and he passes next to the booth where the Evans twins are sharing a burger with Guerin. He walks past them, enters the loo, and scolds at his reflection in the mirror. When he walks out, he crosses paths with Isobel Evans, who’s hurriedly entering the girls bathroom, and he sees Max Evans standing up trying to clean a ketchup stain off his t-shirt. Guerin is shaking his head and looking outside the window, and Alex sees his chance.

With a last glance to the printed picture, Alex drops it carefully into the chaos that’s Michael Guerin’s backpack.

**_just know it was you all along who had a hold of my heart but the demon in me was a best friend from the start, so the time we shared it was precious to me, all the while i was dreaming of revelry_ **  
**[spring. 2008]**

The conversation isn’t exactly developing the way Michael wanted it to. Instead of having Max and Isobel by his side, agreeing that his plan to escape Earth is the best he’s had in ages, they are standing across Isobel’s room, near the door, while he’s still one step into the room through the balcony. He’s used to getting into the Evans’ house through windows at odd hours, so the twins are not surprised anymore. He guesses that, despite them having expected him to show up in the middle of a nice and lazy Sunday afternoon, they weren’t counting on the bomb he’s dropped right onto them.

Right now, Isobel is looking at him warily, and Max is downright furious.

“We're not going anywhere. Not even beyond the stars in a quest to find out if there's someone out there who loves us, Michael,” Max grits out. “Everyone who loves us is _here_.” 

“Everyone who loves _you_ ,” Michael snarls back, defensive in a way he’s never needed to be around Max. “Me, that’s another story altogether.”

“Listen, Michael,” Isobel tries to reason. “Even if you manage to put together a spaceship, which I don’t doubt you can, there’s no guarantee you’re going to find out there what you’re looking for out there.”

“I’m pretty sure it’ll be better than what I have here,” Michael points out sourly, a foot already outside the window and stepping into the balcony. “I don’t know why I thought you’d understand. Don’t bother. I’ll find a way on my own. Donʼt I always?”

And with that he’s leaving, climbing down the balcony and onto the street, a tear-stricken Isobel and an appalled Max in his wake. Michael ambles aimlessly, roaming the streets of Roswell like the drifter he’s become these past months, ever since he decided to flee the fanatics’ house and give living in his truck a chance.

A vehicle which is now parked across the street back where his siblings live, meaning he’ll have to walk back up there to pick it up if he wants to sleep somewhere warm tonight. He hasn’t told them yet that he’s left the group home, because Isobel would worry and Max would want to take him in with them, and if there’s one thing he can’t stand it’s the pity look they both get in their eyes whenever they think he’s not looking.

He can’t stand having become this charity case for them.

He ends up walking up towards Loveless Park, one of his favorite spots in town. He can see the stars from there, so whenever he’s out of gas and can’t drive back to the desert for stargazing, he parks his Chevy close to the park and sets up for a night out in the woods in the middle of Roswell, so he can talk to whomever is up there waiting for him to come back.

Because he’s convinced there has to be someone out there waiting on them to show up, to finally figure out where they’re from and why they ended up on Earth of all places. He might be only seventeen going on sixty-one, but he knows he doesn’t belong here and it doesn’t take a genius to have it figured out – the lack of stability while growing up, the lack of _love_ , the need to fend for himself – he doesn’t think it’d have been his fate had he been raised by his true family.

He doesn’t even know for sure if he’s even related to Max and Isobel, just that the three of them were casualties on a crash that wasn’t supposed to happen. They might only be pod siblings, if that’s even a thing.

“You keep thinking so loud, you’re gonna hurt yourself,” says a voice at his left, startling him. He stops dead in his tracks, hovering just outside the entrance of the park. “Sorry,” the voices continues, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” he lies, turning to the voice and finding Alex Manes perched against the wall, one hand on a guitar’s pegbox. “I was just-”

“So deep in thought you almost crashed into the rail?” Alex supplies, gesturing towards the metallic rail surrounding the park. The gates are closed, which is new to Michael, because the park is usually open this time of the year. “It’s closed due to high-speed wind. They said it’d hit us tonight, so they closed the park.”

“Damn,” Michael swears under his breath. Now he has to go back to the suburbs where the twins live and he can’t drive off to the desert since there’s a warning about wind, as it seems from the looks of the notice attached to the park’s main entrance door. Alex bounces off the wall and tilts his head to one side. “I just wanted to go for a walk here. It calms me,” he explains when he notices Alex staring.

“We could go for a walk together?” Alex offers, placing the guitar on his back and securing it with a strap. “Maybe go to the Crashdown? I could use a milkshake.”

Michael begins shaking his head, but Alex doesn’t seem to take no for an answer, and he’s already grabbing his arm, all but dragging him down the street. Michael knows they have at least forty minutes until they reach the café; he knows there’s no chance he’ll be making it to the Evans’ house before sunset. 

Still, he can’t get himself to deny Alex Manes anything, _Alex Manes_ who always seem to show up in his life when he’s fishing for answers.

It’s been four years since they last spoke regularly, although they’ve exchanged some words while working together on lab duty, but Alex had stopped coming to the music room altogether soon after the picture of the two of them mysteriously appeared in his backpack, and Michael hasn’t been in the right place to reach out for Alex, mainly because he thought he wouldn’t be welcome. He stopped leaving made-up lyrics for Alex to pick them up, although the words still sting in the back of his mind, striving to be released. There’s no point in keeping up with a collaborative work when Alex has so clearly given up on the melody that got them through their freshman year at high school.

Rumor has it that Alex Manes is gay, and his father’s trying to turn him onto the straight side of things by keeping him away from everything he’s ever loved – music falls into that category, so Michael has witnessed as Alex drops out of the school band and leaves the guitar his mother gave him permanently at the music room, the same guitar that’s now hanging off his back. But he’s also borne witness to Alex slowly turning himself into the rebel he’s now, all spiked hair and septum piercing, kohl in place and handcuff necklace around his throat.

Michael knows the makeup isn’t only to show up Alex’s true colors – foundation that thick is also a perfect cover layer for disguising bruises, handprints and gashes. He never addressed it though, and he’s not going to start now. He wants to give Alex the same he wants for himself – some privacy away from prying eyes, so they both can lick their wounds alone.

He knows a bit about tending to bruises that scar the skin and never go away, about treating cuts that get infected after one too many belts hitting the same sore spot, about crosses branding him to get a point. 

“What were you doing so far from home, Alex?” he says after they’ve walked a few miles. 

“I was wandering around,” Alex offers simply, shrugging.

“With your guitar and a bag?” Michael doesn’t miss the way Alex stiffens by his side. “Sorry,” he recoils. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

“You aren’t,” Alex sighs finally. “I was thinking about getting away, but Loveless Park is the farthest I could get. Guess I’m a failure even at escaping.”

Michael can hear the defeat in his voice, see the faint stumble in his step. “You know that’s not right, right?” he dares to say.

“What’s not right, Guerin?” Alex blurts out, stopping and making Michael come to a halt as well, a few steps away from him. “Me running away?”

“You being a failure,” Michael replies smoothly, a soothing edge to his words. He recognizes the pain roaming through Alex’s eyes, flickering under the dim light of dusk. “You know you aren’t.”

“Try telling that to my father,” Alex laments, setting a new pace as he steps forward, getting past Michael. 

“I understand what you’re going through,” Michael says, for lack of better words, and that sets Alex on a fiery speech. He turns around, fully facing Michael in the middle of the street, open air for anyone to walk up and listen to them bickering.

“How could you possibly understand, _Guerin_?” he screeches. “Do you know what it’s like to be always grounded just for being yourself? Do you know what it’s like to have to walk on eggshells every time you are around your father? Oh, wait, you don’t because you don’t have a _father_!”

Michael blinks at the sudden outburst of vicious words thrown his way. Alex himself seems to be taken aback by the force of his own spite, and wriggles his hands in front of him. “I’m sorry,” he says in a much calmer voice. “That was a low blow. You’re not guilty of what’s happened to you.”

Michael shakes his head. Any other day, he would have thrown a tantrum at Alex’s words, he would have made the whole place blow up with his mind. Nowadays, he’s much more in control of his powers, and he manages to keep the things flying around to a bare minimum behind Alex’s back, where he’s set a couple of public dustbins and a bench floating around in his attempt to remain calm on the outside.

“Neither do you,” he finally says, and the objects fall down gently to the ground. “I’m sorry,” he mirrors Alex’s words.

“Me too,” Alex mumbles. “I shouldn’t have-not when you don’t really know what happened to your parents, do you?”

It should have come across as blunt, but Michael doesn’t feel attacked this time. He grabs Alex by the wrist and sets a new pace, walking towards downtown slowly but determined. He doesn’t speak for a long time, and they’re near the Crashdown when he finally dares to say, “No, I don’t know what happened to them, but I plan on finding out if I have any family left somewhere.”

He knows how rumors work around Roswell. Rumor has it that Alex Manes is gay – rumor has it that Michael’s parents died a horrible death under fire and smoke, because no one has ever actually linked him to the little boy who showed up in the middle of the desert, holding hands with two equally scared kids who ended up being adopted by a well-known lawyer and his wife. Michael knows everyone thinks his true parents were the meth heads back in Albuquerque, just as he knows everyone thinks he’s tailing along the Evans twins out of some kind of popularity kink. He doesn’t care about what anyone has to say about his upbringing or his motives – they’re his and his alone – but somehow Alex Manes falls out of the list of people Michael doesn’t give a fuck about.

Alex Manes earned a place in Michael’s life when he first showed up with the promise of music and a song to commit his life to; when he’s around, Michael can be himself just as much as he is around Max and Isobel. He doesn’t understand why, but whenever Alex Manes looks his way, the chaos boiling permanently inside of him seems to be appeased.

Whenever Alex Manes is involved, Michael feels as though he could walk a million miles barefoot just to be close to him.

“So, you know where to start searching?” Alex asks. Michael can see a gleam of true interest in his chocolate eyes. 

“Not yet, but I think I’m close.”

It scares him to death, the way those eyes seem to bore holes in his soul, pinning him to the ground yet lifting him up. There’s a force dragging him to Alex, to his warmth and his welcoming smile. There’s something stronger than him pulling him to Alex, forcing him to orbit around Alex like Titan around Saturn.

The same force that’s always talking in his mind, making it difficult for him to focus on anything other than equations and math and calculations on how far he might get if he could just find the right constant in his numbers. The same voice that he manages to quiet a little when he plays music, even if it’s on borrowed guitars at odd hours. That voice is silenced by Alex’s bright melody and the sound of strings washing over his soul, finding him at the bottom of the well he’s plunged into.

Michael feels as though Alex might be able to get him to the light just with a smile.

They’re staring into each other’s eyes for the longest time, until the sound of a door opening and footsteps approaching take them out of their reverie.

“Alex!” Liz exclaims, all but jumping onto her friend. “There you are! We were worried about you! Maria went to your place to pick you up like we had agreed but you weren’t-oh, sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt,” she trails off when her eyes land on Michael. 

He can _hear_ what she’s thinking, and he’s not a dreamwalker like Isobel. He can hear the whirring in her brain as she’s trying to process the situation she’s just jumped into.

“It’s okay, I was just leaving,” he says, faking a nonchalant attitude he doesn’t feel.

“Oh, no, get inside, lemme get you some fries,” Alex hurries to say. “Remember I owe you a milkshake.”

Michael can’t help but smile at that. It’s the first time someone outside Max and Isobel genuinely wants to spend time with him, even if it’s out of some sort of self-imposed debt.

“Okay, just this once,” he accepts, waiting for Alex to step into the café first, right after he finishes exchanging an odd look with Liz.

He doesn’t get the chance to actually share that milkshake with Alex, because the moment he enters the Crashdown, he’s surrounded by a blonde force pulling him into a tight embrace. “Don’t you ever scare me like this, Michael!” Isobel exclaims shakily into his curls, a handful of blonde locks falling through his fingers as he reciprocates the hug.

“I didn’t mean to-”

“You can’t burst out like that and disappear for hours!” she scolds him, separating enough to look at him in the eye. “I was worried. We _both_ were, right, Max?”

“I didn’t think you’d want to be around me now that I’ve told you my plans.”

Isobel offers him a watery smile. “Those are your plans, but they’re just that, plans. It’s not as if you’re going to up and disappear into the space tomorrow.” She sounds so sure of herself that Michael can’t help but stare at him agape. “We still have time to convince you that your family is here, that _we_ want you here. We’re family, Michael. Tell him, Max,” she commands.

Michael chuckles at the look she fires to Max, who’s standing awkwardly behind her. He looks distressed, as if instead of just a few hours he’s been searching for him for decades.

Maybe it’s the toll of their time in the pod finally getting to them.

They stare at each other for a long moment, hesitant about who should take that first step. Isobel is waiting on them to make up their minds, tapping her feet impatiently on the floor, huffing but not saying anything.

In the end, both of them move at the same time, and they crash into a tight hug that speaks of love and trust and _family_ in ways Michael has only known whenever the twins are around.

“I’m sorry,” Max mumbles into their embrace, tightening his grip on Michael’s hoodie as he crashes onto him. “I just don’t want you to go where we can’t follow, Michael. You’re our brother, I don’t want to let go of you.”

“I know, Maxwell,” he whispers back, grasp just as tight as he inhales the scent that’s his brother’s. 

“I just wish you’d had a better time,” Max continues, but Michael’s not paying attention anymore to his apologies. Alex Manes is walking through the door of the café, following Liz and Maria on their way out. He suddenly pauses, turning around as if pulled by a strange force, and searches for Michael’s eyes.

When they catch him, Michael feels his mind quiet, the whirring of his thoughts slowed down, the chaos settling. Only when Alex breaks eye contact does Michael’s world start spinning once again.

“Why don’t we get a celebratory burger?” Isobel suggests, already heading to a booth and gracefully sliding into it. Max drags Michael towards the table, because he’s still staring at the closing door, gaze attached to the spot where Alex has been, lingering and longing and hurting him.

He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him, to pine after someone like this. He’s got plans, even if Isobel thinks she can actually talk him out of them, and they don’t involve getting a human on board.

But he hasn’t been so sure of wanting to tell anyone about his true nature than when he’s with Alex, as if not telling Alex the truth means earning a place in hell for as long as he can rot down there. Not telling Alex that he’s an alien, that he hatched out of a pod after fifty years in stasis, that he has powers that could put the fake telekinetics on TV to shame – not telling Alex about his past might mean that he has no future.

He has no time to muse over it as Isobel’s ordering an extra side of fries and two big milkshakes for him, claiming that she just needs a salad. He takes it all in stride – Max’s mournful gaze, Isobel’s mother henning – and he pushes that particular train of thought for when he’s lying on his back on his truck bed, three layers of hoodies and sweaters and underneath a frayed sleeping bag, staring at the night sky under the wind, after having been fed and nursed by his sister.

He still hasn’t reached a conclusion when he drifts to sleep, stars covering him with their protective brightness, blinking from above as the wind howls around him.

He doesn’t know what possesses him to act like that, but a couple of days later he enters the music room and hauls up the only guitar whose owner will run through hell and back to retrieve it.

**_we were silenced by the night but you and i, we're gonna rise again, divided from the light, i wanna love the way we used to then_**  
**[summer. 2012]**

The desert that stretches in front of him isn’t that different from the one he’s left behind in Afghanistan. The dunes don’t hold hideouts for terrorists waiting on them to step close enough so they can shoot at them from below, and the sun doesn’t turn every daydreaming image into a mirage worth dying for. And still, Alex can feel the similarities in his bones as he drives past the last traffic light in Roswell and into the first few miles away from town until he reaches his destination.

Sanders’ Auto remains the same after all these years, and it’s still the place he comes back to instead of his family house when he’s back in town on leave. Alex doesn’t want to set foot in the halls that watched him abandoned and left out as a child, beaten and defeated as a teenager; he surely doesn’t want those walls to come down on him as he slowly becomes the crippled soul war molds every soldier to be.

There’s a trailer standing right next to the entrance, surrounded by broken cars and pieces scattered throughout a ground that’s not even. Alex stumbles as he tries to catch his step towards the trailer. There’s no sign of anyone around, since it’s dusk and most of the patrons are out in the Wild Pony, giving Maria a headache and leaving her generous tips in their drunken wake. Still, he marches to the metal panel holding the door to the trailer, and knocks once. Not too hard, not too soft.

One knock, and the door flies open.

“You came,” carries a voice through the space, calling at Alex with rich undertones. The body that follows the voice is slender, clad in tight jeans and an oil-stricken white and plain t-shirt. Michael Guerin smiles in a way that disarms Alex, and he’s left admiring the beauty of those curls against the back light from inside the trailer.

“Of course I came,” he reassures him, fingers playing with the rim of his jacket. He hasn’t even bothered changing into civil clothes, so he’s showed up to Michael’s in his fatigues. He doesn’t really have that much time, anyway. “Told you I’d come even if it’d be just for one night.”

“You don’t always keep your promises, Manes,” Michael accuses, voice low and dangerous, making Alex shiver. “I couldn’t be sure, with the way you left last time.”

Alex sighs. He knows he’s not the best at standing to what he says – he told Michael that he’d be back by the end of last fall, only to be reenlisted for a new deployment to Afghanistan. He didn’t get any time for reaction; one night he was about to pack a bag back to Roswell, and the day after he was on a plane to the sands that hold all the nightmares. “I’m sorry. I was deployed to Afghanistan, no warning. You know how this rolls.”

“No, I don’t,” Michael spits. He’s still standing in the doorway, preventing Alex from stepping inside. Alex thinks he kind of deserves this treatment. After all, he’s been the one to never put a label to this – too worried that his father might find out that whatever he caught them upon at the tool shed is still going on. Alex knows what his father’s capable of doing.

Michael has a permanent reminder of his power in the form of a mangled, scarred hand he can’t use properly anymore.

“Get in,” Michael finally relents, stepping aside and holding the door open so Alex can enter the trailer. “We don’t want your daddy catching up on us again, now do we?”

The accusation stings, piercing him harder than any shrapnel ever could.

He obliges, and the door closes behind him with a soft click. There’s a dim light showering the inner space with a soft yellow undertone. The place is as small as Alex would have expected from a trailer in the middle of a junkyard, but it still reels off Michael Guerin. When he turns, he faces Michael looking at him as if he’s just seen him for the first time. He knows it’s striking, the way the scars and bruises stand out in his skin. He knows Michael is staring at the one he hasn’t been able to conceal underneath his clothes – the line that crosses from his hairline until his right eyebrow. It’s fairly new, so it’s still healing and it looks pink and swelled up.

“It’s nothing,” he tries to explain. “Really, Guerin.”

“You telling me that a new scar that could’ve taken your eye out is nothing, _Manes_?” There’s the derisive snarl, Guerin’s trademark. Alex hasn’t been on the receiving end of it for a few years now. 

“I’ve been to war,” he tries to reason, sliding off his jacket as he speaks. The movement reveals his tanned arms, covered in white lines that cross them back and forth, new scars mingling with the old ones from darker times. “This shit happens when you’re at war.”

“That, you keep saying whenever you’re back,” Michael counteracts. He shakes his head, as if he’s not expecting Alex to actually reply, and he moves towards the small bunk where Alex has spent countless hours relearning the touch of skin on skin. “How long this time?”

“That’s, uhm,” Alex stutters. “That’s what I came to tell you. I can’t stay, tonight. I have to go back to the base in a couple of hours.”

“What?” Michael stops mid-movement, hand stretched out for balance as his body sways against the counter that serves as nightstand as well. “Why? I thought you said you were on leave.”

“Not exactly,” Alex braces himself for what he’s got to say, because he knows it’s going to hurt Michael just as much as it hurt him when he knew. “I fly out first thing in the morning.”

Michael remains silent. He just stares blankly at him, processing the information, waiting – giving Alex an open for further explanation. Alex goes in for the fall.

“I’m deployed back to war, tomorrow morning. Top secret destination. I’m just allowed to tell you that I’m leaving, but not where to.”

“You can’t tell me-Alex, that’s bullshit, and you know it.” There’s an edge of desperation in Michael’s voice, one that Alex can feel related to, because he’s felt the very same desperation as he’s stepped into base only to be told that all his dreams were once again shattered into shards of glass.

“I’m sorry, Guerin,” he whispers, staring down at his hands, waiting for the outburst that surely comes in the form of angry shouts and hiccupping breaths. He can feel the trailer shaking under Michael’s tense stance; it reminds him of all the times back in high school when Kyle Valenti would encounter the locker door with his face for no reason other than the hinges being probably loose – the same tension oozing in the air, as if it was recharging from an outside source of energy. There are a few mugs and plates that tremble over the counter as Michael tries – and fails – to collect himself. Alex closes his eyes briefly, assuming it’s just the force with which Michael is gripping the side of the counter. “I’m sorry,” he repeats.

“You can’t leave like that,” Michael tries again. His words are loaded, jaded, as he attempts to stay upright. His whole body is shivering from where Alex is watching him, and it hurts Alex to see Michael so desperate.

“I’ll be back before you know it,” Alex promises, although he hates to make empty promises. He knows he can’t vouch for it. “Just one more deployment after this one, remember? Four deployments and I could come back home.”

“For how long before your father gets in your head again?” Michael lets go of the counter and sits on the cot, hands latched together to keep his fingers from gripping anything else. Alex dares to sit beside him. 

He knows Michael is right. He _knows_ his father always comes up in between them, but his fears are legit. Alex’s let his father get in their way too many times with good reason – after the incident in the tool shed, Alex has been afraid of whatever outcome might happen from an encounter with Jesse Manes.

Probably watching how your father breaks the love of your life with a hammer does that to a soul, Alex muses as he reaches out to touch Michael. There have been several other threats in the span of the four years that have stretched between his shaken self enlisting out of fear and the codebreaker that’s now tilting his head and running fingers up and down Michael’s arm. Alex knows that makes Michael comes undone every single time.

It’s always been like this between them. Michael craves touch, at any given moment, anywhere, and Alex loves giving in to him. Even when they don’t have time, when they don’t have the chance to explore each other for the long hours they wish they had, Michael always longs for a fleeting caress and Alex always dives in for skin.

This time isn’t different.

There’s a path of shivers in the wake of Alex’s fingertips tracing patterns down Michael’s arm, until he reaches both Michael’s wrists. For a second Alex hesitates before his right index finger gently touches the ugly scars holding Michael’s left hand hostage. He feels a coldness creeping up his spine as he draws circles on the back of Michael’s hand, tugging at him so he manages to have Michael lie on his back on the cot.

Alex wants to show Michael just how much he wishes he could stay, if only for one night – if he wasn’t the scared child still hiding from his father’s shadow in an open hallway. He tries to pour everything he feels in the way his hands roam Michael’s upper body while he dives for a kiss that he hopes can convey all the promises for a future he doesn’t actually believe in. There’s electricity coursing through his veins as he leans closer to Michael, sharing the air where his erratic breaths mingle.

“Guerin,” he whispers, inwardly wincing at his own use of last names – as if calling Michael _Guerin_ out loud would spare him of the pain that being just _Michael_ had been piled upon them back on the day when a tool shed went from being safe haven to becoming hell broke loose on Earth. “Guerin,” he repeats, enjoying the way the word rolls in his tongue, soft and liquid.

“Alex,” Michael breathes in reply, steadying him with one hand grasping at the small of Alex’s back. “Please,” and even if Alex isn’t sure of what’s being pleaded out of him, he wants to give everything to Michael.

He closes the brief gap between their lips and ignites the only flame he doesn’t care to catch fire from.

There’s a soft tenderness whenever Michael’s fingers touch his skin, caressing the scars and worshipping the moles he finds in his quest down Alex’s back when they’re already naked and shivering on the narrow bed. Alex bites his lower lip in an attempt to keep the moans from escaping his throat, but he’s helpless against Michael’s mouth on him. He wants to protest, saying that he doesn’t have enough time for anything, but his sweaty skin reveals a truth he’s been denying himself for far too long.

There’s a pull bringing him back to Michael every time, an inherent magnetism that makes him come undone under Michael’s gaze. A force beyond his comprehension, a trigger that ignites his soul and turns him into a gravityless heap of crushed dreams and burnt feelings. Something so strong that engulfs Alex in Michael’s heat and pins him there for as long as he can stand the blazing.

Michael’s humming under his breath, a soft song Alex can’t really make out above the rushing in his own ears, blood flooding his veins with an energy he hasn’t been aware of before. The moment Michael’s lips find their way up from the small of Alex’s back to his neck, Alex knows he’s gone for good. He can’t stop the blooming sensation that produce goosebumps in the wake of Michael’s tongue, the trail of glowing kisses as Michael claims Alex’s skin as his reign – a kingdom exploding in fireworks and lightning, worlds colliding in a galaxy of sensations that threaten to consume them both in the pyre of unleashed love.

 _Love_.

Alex feels his breath catching in his throat as he realizes it’s the first time he’s ever admitted that, even to himself. There’s a connection so deep between them that makes it almost unbearable to _exist_ , as though he can’t be without Michael becoming his other half. He hears the song Michael’s singing, the music familiar yet still unknown, and he recognizes the sounds in the chords that his memory supplies, from a happier time when they both had been allowed to dream without fear.

It’s the song he’s been writing for the longest time, lyricless except for the few lines Michael’s been dropping from time to time, no longer caring to be stealthy.

Alex hums in return, against the back of Michael’s scarred hand, the reminder of what happens when they foolishly believed they could hope for a better future. The weight of Michael’s body over him settles him into the mattress, covering every inch of skin as they move in synch between mangled sheets that speak volumes of hidden passions and unchained heartbeats.

Afterwards, he lies beneath the warmth Michael exudes, body tingling. Alex can’t really move underneath Michael’s possessive grip, one leg thrown over his to keep him in place, left hand drawing patterns on sticky skin while Alex’s own fingers thread a path into Michael’s curls – the motion relaxing them both enough to feel sleep claiming him. Alex shakes his head to clear it from the haze of Michael’s scent, and pushes at Michael to move.

“I really need to go,” he whispers apologetically. “I wish I didn’t have to.”

“I know,” Michael sighs as he props himself on an elbow, allowing Alex enough space to slide off the bed and grab his clothes. No time for a shower, so he hopes the stench of sex and something that’s only _Michael_ fades enough by the time he reaches the base. He gets dressed under Michael’s scrutiny, eyes following his every movement as he buttons his jacket and laces his boots. 

“Guerin-”

“Don’t,” Michael lifts up a hand between them. Alex can see it shaking slightly. “Don’t say goodbye, Alex. You’re coming back.”

They hold their gazes for a long second before Alex nods curtly. He’s coming back to Michael, although he wishes – hopes against hope, biding his soul to a devil he doesn’t care about – that Michael’s long moved out of Roswell and the shitty present troubling them by the time Alex makes it back stateside.

On his way out, Michael shoves a notebook into his hands, eyes blotched and breath ragged. “Don’t forget who you really are, Alex Manes,” he whispers, and the door closes when Alex nods curtly again for fear that actually bidding farewell might break him.

He jumps into his car and takes a moment to breath. He’s wanted to retaliate, to yell at Michael that he was supposed to be doing great things – NASA, SETI, ESA – instead of wasting away in Roswell, New Mexico. He’s wanted to crash into Michael and burn a brand in that skin, let Michael mark him deep down so he’ll never forget the endless nights that bled till sunrise, when Alex had to leave.

Alex never spends the night, never allows Michael to find him anywhere that’s not near the trailer, because he’s afraid his father will find out. So, he’s always left dusting in the junkyard, just like right now, knuckles white from the pressure he’s applying on the steering wheel, as he tries to decipher if this time is the last time he’s seen hazel eyes reading his soul as though he is the most important treasure in the whole universe.

Their whole story has always revolved around the stars and the galaxies and the space; black holes dragging them into painful arguments, supernovas blinding them into believing there’s a future where they don’t get marred by a past that’s already defined them.

And the stars helping them navigate the chaos created by their souls bound together in an eternal knot.

He finally musters up enough courage to start the engine and drive away from the junkyard before Michael gets the chance to collect himself and saunter out of the trailer to convince him to desert the Air Force. It wouldn’t be the first time, and it wouldn’t be the first time Alex’s thought about just eloping with Michael and start a life away from everything. But there’s a force keeping them in place, orbiting around each other, close enough to get a glimpse of what would have been, a taste of forever, before pushing them away in opposite directions so they wouldn’t burn.

He makes it in time to the base to be ushered into a Humvee and sent towards the small landing track by the far end of the place.

Alex closes his eyes as the plane takes off, small notebook securely gripped in his hand. There’s a lot he can do during the idle hours of flying to Germany, where they’ll be debriefed and explained exactly their duty this time. When it’s safe for him to breathe, Alex opens the notebook to find words scrawled in almost every page – lyrics and chords and whole songs come to life in his mind as his fingertip traces the strokes. He understands Michael’s words now, a few hours before he knows his fate.

He’s always wanted to be a songwriter. He’s always wanted to be a singer. He’s always wanted to make music for a living, away from Roswell, in a place where he could just _be_. But it’s been a while since the last time he’s played a guitar, and far longer since he’s written anything. It’s been years since he’s last thought about the melody he began writing when he was eleven and carefree.

Alex doesn’t want to write songs now. He doesn’t want to make music anymore. Because he writes as he breathes, and when breathing hurts, his songs bleed. 

**_i'm almost me again, she's almost you, i wouldn't know where to start, sweet music playin' in the dark_**  
**[fall. 2019]**

When he comes to, a headache threatens to rip his skull in half. Michael tries to sit up, but he loses his balance on the motion and ends up half sprawled once again on the cold concrete floor. A hand shoots up on its own accord to feel the back of his head, and the fingers come back sticky. He frowns, but there’s so much darkness so he can’t really make out if they’re stained with sweat or blood.

A cough catches his attention, and he freezes on his spot on the floor.

Wherever he is, he surely isn’t alone.

Michael attempts to sit up again, only to get the same outcome as before. Groaning, he manages to support himself against the closest wall, draping a hand across his stomach. The fingers, which were already sticking together with some kind of bodily fluid, land on a hole in his t-shirt and he hisses in pain as the digits chase through the perforation, prodding at what feels like a bleeding wound.

“Oh joy,” he mutters through gritted teeth. That explains the constant pain, even if he doesn’t remember anything about how or why or when or _for how long_ he’s landed up wherever he is.

“‘chael?” he hears, a low sound coming from somewhere in the darkness surrounding him. “Michael?” It’s less slurred than before, but it doesn’t stop Michael’s heart from skipping a beat in his already frantic state. He’s only heard _that_ voice speaking his given name a handful of times, so this is either a too real nightmare or a nightmarish scene taken out of a Stephen King’s book.

He hopes he wakes up soon, because he doesn’t think he can survive hearing Alex Manes calling out his name in a desperate attempt to find balance.

“Alex?” he calls back. He hears rustling and what sounds like someone crawling slowly across the filthy ground. “What’s going on?”

Alex doesn’t reply, and Michael thinks for a second that he’s already having hallucinations. He doesn’t know for sure how long he’s been out of it, or how much blood he’s lost, so maybe he’s becoming light headed and hearing voices. The rustle resumes, and out of the darkness a hand lands awkwardly on his upper arm, eliciting a yelp from him. The movement ripples through him and he feels his wound stretch.

“Alex?” he repeats, soft voice as he lifts his newly healed hand to cover the fingers already circling around his arm. There’s a sob from somewhere at his right, and the fingers’ grip on his sleeve tightens. “Shh, it’s okay,” he finds himself saying. “I’m here. We’ll find a way out.”

He knows he’s talking nonsense, and he’s probably just speaking to himself because there’s no way on Earth – on any _galaxy_ – that he’s gotten himself locked up with Alex Manes, not after everything they’ve been through. The fingers on his arm loosen a bit their bone-crushing grip, and before he can acknowledge the movement, there’s a warm body pressed against his right side. 

Alex has collapsed by Michael’s side with a loud _thud_ and a soft _ooomf_ that sounds like a balloon deflating. Michael is sure it’s Alex and not some figment of his own imagination. He just _knows_. 

His left hand finds a way from Alex’s fingers up his arm; twisting in his spot so he can reach further up, Michael gently touches the smooth skin of Alex’s neck. His wound is angrily stinging, and his head hasn’t stopped aching. He doesn’t withdraw, not when he’s finally getting the contact he’s been craving for months. Michael’s starving for touch, and if he’s dying, as he suspects he is, he might as well depart with at least that dream come true.

The light surrounds them without warning, blinding in a way Michael isn’t expecting, and it takes him a couple of tries to get his eyes adjusted to the new scenario. They’re in a holding cell – the concrete floor he’s already felt under his bruised fingers, the walls splattered with dark stains he doesn’t want to think about, the bars keeping them inside with their mockering distance. Some jarring sounds are blaring out of a speaker hidden somewhere, since he can’t spot it, and he remembers with painful precision the tales of torture in the Middle East that he’s been fed by media and movies when he couldn’t reach Alex – when his life was reduced to the waiting that shaped him into the shell he’s now.

A groan coming from his right alerts him that Alex is still in pain. He tilts his head to the side in an attempt to assess their current predicament, and just the tiniest of movement feels like splitting his head in two, but he moves anyway.

“You look like a truck run over you. Twice,” he manages out in a feeble attempt at joking. His voices doesn’t carry loud enough over the blaring sounds, but he knows Alex can read his lips.

Alex has his face scrunched in a painful grimace. There are a few bruises blooming from his chin downwards, and Alex tries to duck his head so they remain in the shadows cast by the glaring illumination above them, reminding Michael of the times he watched Alex cover the marks his father left on him when they were younger. Although it hurts to just _look_ at him, Michael can’t see any blood. His eyes roam further down, and he halts with despair when he sees that Alex’s missing his prosthetic. Whoever did this to them – to _Alex_ – didn’t want to grant any of them a chance of escaping.

Alex can’t walk away even if he breaks himself free, and Michael isn’t going to leave him behind, but the wound he flat out refuses to acknowledge in his sight prevents him from straightening up, so carrying Alex out of the cell in the chance he can bend the bars with his powers is out of the question.

“Not a truck,” Alex shrugs, purple mingling with smooth skin under Michael’s scrutiny. Michael can make out the words just by the way Alex is frowning, but he’s intent in reading those lips that once kissed him like he held the secrets of the whole universe – and maybe he did. “Just my father.”

Michael’s going to kill the bastard the moment he finds a safe way out of the place where they’re being held.

He loses track of time as they sat propped against the wall, Alex draped over him as Michael keeps his head up against the surface, not wanting to look down and discover the damage his body’s suffering. At some point, the music stops and the lights go off, and he finds instant relief in the darkness and the silence that engulf both of them, even he’s deaf and blind for the most part of the following moments.

“What are you doing here?” Alex questions, voice rough and muffled from where he’s got his face smashed against Michael’s shoulder. 

“I came here to save my knight in distress,” he jokes lightly. “Where’s _here_?” he keeps on, trying to sound nonchalant, but the truth is, he doesn’t know where they are. He doesn’t remember how he’s got here or where they are imprisoned. 

Michael doesn’t expect Alex to stiffen by his side, crawling away from him in the darkness, keeping himself at what seems like a whole world apart – it’s probably just an arm’s length. “You don’t remember,” Alex says, something guarded in his words as he keeps himself away from Michael. “Next time light’s up, you’re letting me have a look at your head.”

“I’m fine,” Michael protests, though he knows there’s no point in arguing with Alex.

“I should have known, when they brought you in,” Alex whispers mostly to himself, but in the dead silence that surrounds them it’s hard not to make out the words lingering in the air. “You were so out of it. I think maybe they drugged you up. Or maybe it was the blood loss, I’m not sure. They could have done so many things, and I couldn’t stop them.” There’s an edge on Alex’s voice that Michael wishes he could soften with a touch and a kiss, but all of a sudden he’s devoid of energy. 

Suddenly everything hurts, starting from the places where Alex isn’t touching him anymore.

“They? Who are _they_ , Alex?” Michael doesn’t really need an answer, he doesn’t want one, but he still asks. He just wants Alex to keep talking so the sudden load on his own soul doesn’t feel like binding him to the ground.

“You know who,” Alex replies softly.

Michael reaches out again, touching Alex as if he was the one tethering Michael to this moment, pain forgotten for a second as his fingertips graze skin. His fingers follow a path from the hollow of Alex’s neck to his cheek, and the moment Michael’s fingertips reach that patch of skin, his head explodes in whites and thunder, and he lulls it back against the wall, where he crashes into loudly. Bitterly.

Alex seems to vanish, slipping through his fingertips as Michael tries his best to hang onto the feeling of scars and bones, to no avail. When he opens his eyes again, he’s sprawled on the floor in the bunker below the Airstream, right hand stretched out in front of him, and Isobel’s big eyes staring down at him with worry tattooed in her irises. He quickly checks his abdomen, only to find no wound bleeding out on him, and he’s almost certain that the throbbing in his head is due to a bad case of hangover instead of from him banging a wall with his skull.

“Michael?” Isobel asks tentatively, the rest of her words lost as she swallows. “Can I?” she finally manages, crouching besides him but keeping her distance. He nods, so Isobel flops down by his side, throwing an arm around his shoulders and pulling Michael into a tight embrace that reminds him of the times spent in the Evans’ roof staring at the stars and wondering which one was their home.

“It hurts,” he mutters. “It hurts everywhere.”

“You were screaming,” Isobel says softly, with a voice that speaks tiredly of the many times she’s had to rescue him from his nightmares in the past days. He has lost count, but she’s never complained, not a single time. Michael is slowly remembering all the moments he’s been through bad dreams coming alive in his mind – regressions when it could fish for the worst in his memories – and before he knows it he’s already sitting up and looking wildly around. The pain throbbing inside of him is getting harder to ignore, and he needs something to ease the ache before it engrains in the chaos that his soul already is.

“Michael,” Isobel warns, but he’s not listening to her. Once reassured that he can walk, he stands up and makes a beeline for the cabinets below one of the shelves, opening the doors frantically. Everytime he reaches inside of one of them, his hands come up empty and his fingers begin to itch from the unsuccessful search. No matter where he looks – the cabinets, underneath the makeshift table he still has in the middle of the narrow space, the top drawers above the desk by the far end – he doesn’t find a single bottle of booze, a drop of acetone. 

“Michael,” Isobel repeats, and he stills. “You don’t remember, do you?”

“Remember what?” he spits, chagrin and regret lacing in his words as he knows he’s about to take his frustration on Isobel. “Where’s my alcohol, Isobel? Where have you hidden it?”

“You don’t remember,” she mutters mostly to herself. “You said it could happen,” her voice is softer but she sounds determined. “Sit down, Michael,” she commands. He still has his back on her, hands sprawled on the backlit desk where the blueprints for a spacecraft mock him. He shakes his head no, but she’s relentless. “You can sit down, or you can make _me_ force you to sit down. You choose.”

Michael doesn’t think she has it in herself to reach out to his mind and actually make him do something he doesn’t really want to do, but he doesn’t want to test her. So he sits exactly where she’s patting the ground by her left side, and stares straight ahead as she speaks up again, as if telling a tale to a young child.

“You said you’d more likely forget about this whole thing,” she starts. “You said you’d have nightmares, and that you’d be in pain, and it’s a good thing Max’s still in stasis in his pod because it’d kill him to feel this all through our connection. It kills _me_ , everytime,” she smiles sadly.

“What’s this all about? Why do I forget whatever this is?”

“You tell me, Michael. You’re the genius!” she lifts her hands up in the air, as in defeat or surrender, Michael can’t know for sure. “You just called me a couple of days ago, told me to help you get rid of all the alcohol and the acetone, and to keep an eye on you while you went through all the phases of-”

“Withdrawal,” he finishes for her, eyes wide and round as he still refuses to meet her gaze. “It makes sense, the memory loss, you know,” Michael explains when he feels Isobel tensing by his side. “Acetone numbs us in a way very similar to what chemical drugs do to humans. Getting it all out of our systems could lead to temporary secondary effects.”

“This is one of them?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

They stay in a loaded silence for so long that Michael begins to think Isobel has fallen asleep, until she asks again, “Where were you? When I found you earlier, you were screaming Alex Manes’ name over and over. Where were you?”

“Not in a good place,” it’s the only explanation he offers, and it seems to be enough for Isobel, who once again surrounds him with her slender arm. He huffs a little, but leans against her and allows her to give him the treatment a big sister would offer.

The following morning, he wakes up in the cot, covered in sweat and trembling. Isobel’s not anywhere to be seen, and when he tries to call her name he finds his throat closing off, lips parched and mouth dry. Michael forces himself to an upright position and attempts to bring his connection to his sister back to life. The searing pain coursing through his veins prevents him from even reaching the correct place in his messed mind.

He doubles over as sparks of light explode behind his closed eyes, dry heaving and shivering. Everything hurts; his left hand, healed by Max in a peak of God-resembling act of generosity, cramps up and stings violently, no mercy for him as he clenches it into a fist. The pain doesn’t disappear; if anything, it increases until all Michael can feel is the need to kill it with whatever he can find. But he can’t move at all, he’s glued to the sheets, a force stronger than his own powers holding him in place. Michael feels a bubble of panic rise inside of him as he begins to lose his grip on reality. 

In his mind the screeches from past nightmares add up to the current cries that deafen the silence around him; he places both his hands over his ears in a feeble attempt to keep the voices from screaming outside of him. There’s a rush of something indescribable crawling up his spine, and the memories he’s been trying not to think about come front in his inner eye as he feels as though his insides are imploding somewhere between his heart and his skin.

Unable to stop the images from popping up in his mind, he watches as the scenes unfold: a hammer, a car wreck, a drunk tank, a crash landing, the fear of losing, the pain in the _I don't love you!_ , the lies in the _we've been holding onto this thing_ , the open wound in the _it's gotten us nowhere_ , and then _fire fire fire_. When chaos unfolds, Michael can’t contain his powers anymore, and they go haywire at the very same moment Isobel climbs down the ladder with one Liz Ortecho tailing behind her. He can see they have left the dormer open, but he’s panicking and he doesn’t register anything else as he only _feels_.

The glowing piece of the spaceship nails the wall mere inches from Liz’s head, as the rest of the furniture and his research papers draw circles in the air, some feet over the ground.

“Michael!” he sees Isobel yelling as he reads her lips, because there’s no way he can hear anything above the thrumming of his own heart crashing over and over again. “Michael!”

Everything hurts, and as much as he wants it to stop, he doesn’t know how. So he cries out in pain, eyes fluttering closed, hands still over his ears, hunched over himself in a heap on top of his bed, tied in a knot so tight he doesn’t know he’ll ever be able to untangle his fears from himself. 

“Go away!” he screeches, voice rough and teary. “I don’t want to hurt you!”

“You won’t,” comes a voice through the haze and the pain, a voice he can hear clearly even with all the noise reigning in his mind. “Let me help you, _Michael_.”

“You’re not real,” he breaks through the tears he hasn’t been aware have been falling down his cheeks. A hand brushes them away with infinite gentleness, and Michael feels a bit of his mind calming down. “You can’t be.”

“Open your eyes,” the voice commands. “Open your eyes and look at me, Michael.”

“You’re not real,” he repeats, his chaos falling into place as the fingers caress his cheek, moving to cup his face. “Alex would call me anything but Guerin.”

“I’m sorry,” the voice mutters. As the words keep coming, sweet, soft, reassuring, Michael feels his mind embracing the silence, although there are a few noises marring the abated surface. “Let me help you.”

The fingers dig into his skin, and Michael’s forced to open his eyes. He stares right into Alex’s brown irises, their foreheads so close Michael could touch him if he so much as leaned just an inch forward. “Alex?” he whispers now that the sounds in his mind have quieted enough to let him take in his surroundings – the pregnant silence that follows the clacking of furniture finally falling back to their places on the floor. 

“I’m here,” Alex says, a promise hidden beneath the words. “Isobel called me. Said you were having nightmares. Said you were calling out my name.”

“You’re here,” Michael marvels, trembling, too tired to actually try to form any coherent thought. He doesn’t even flinch when he registers the fact that Isobel has taken the liberty to call _Alex Manes_ out of the blue; even if Michael had been crying his name out, they haven’t been on speaking terms ever since Michael had turned to Maria all those months before. When things with Maria had blown out on themselves, Michael hadn’t reached out for Alex, and Alex had remained as away from him as it was physically possible.

The pain slowly recedes as Alex smiles warmly. “I’m not going anywhere,” he promises. Michael finally dares to take one hand from his ear and grabs Alex’s wrist where it’s touching Michael’s neck. The simple touch sets his whole body alive, and the ache gets consumed in a fire that rises from the deepest of his soul. “I want to help you, if you want me to.”

“I do,” Michael replies almost instantly, surprised to be able to talk at all, the blaze binding him. The voices inside his head start rising up again, and he grimaces. “They won’t stop,” he says, biting his lower lip to keep controlled the yelp he feels building up in his throat. The spinning in his mind hurts just like a sucker punch would.

“I can quiet the voices,” Alex whispers. When Michael searches his face, he realizes Alex is crying too. “I know how. You told me.”

“No one can.”

“Let me try,” Alex pushes past his stubbornness, leaning in and touching Michael’s forehead. His skin tingles in all the places Alex is caressing him. He nods slowly, the sole movement sending the voices in a spiral of screeching and fighting. The pressure against his skull is unbearable, and Michael feels himself getting lost again in the pain seizing him up.

Alex’s hand keeps him steady in place. He hums softly, stroking Michael’s cheek as the tunes come out his lips unfettered. The maze in Michael’s head becomes a blur as he suddenly doesn’t feel so lost in his own mind. Galaxies explode in supernovas as he follows the path of Alex’s voice singing the way back to reality before he reaches a peak where he can’t come back.

This time, the memories that flood him are far less painful – they remind him of those first days in the tool shed, of the rising hopes and the blooming love, of the _I have all this chaos going on inside me all the time_ and the _all I want to do is get away from myself_ and the _my entropy changes_ and the _people don’t always have a agenda_.

Everything goes quiet. The world stops swirling counterflow, tilting on its axis until Michael can find balance in the words that Alex’s humming softly, coaxing him to find the way back home. Michael doesn’t know if he’s ever had a home to come back to, but he’s never been able to deny anything to Alex. He can try, at least. The edges of his world soften, his vision sharpens. Michael squares his jaw and looks at his demons right in the eye, defiant, bold. 

He breaks through. 

**_because we’re a phoenix rising from the ashes of the searing pain of broken hearts_**  
**[four seasons. the future]**

There's a loud voice singing off key, floating through the air to Alex, who's sitting on the porch, guitar in his lap and pick dancing in between his fingers. He chuckles as he looks down to the strings that call to him, soft and sweet and charming. A nervous Beagle finds her way to his legs, rubbing her fur against the loose sweatpants he’s wearing. The warmth spreads quickly, a spark running outwards – alighting his soul and setting fire throughout his whole body.

He sets aside the guitar and bends down to scratch her behind her ears. “You like it, don’t you, Luna?” The Beagle looks up at him, as though assessing the situation before tucking her head behind his left ankle and lying down on the cool wood of the porch floor. “Yeah, I thought so,” Alex continues talking even though now it’s mostly to himself. “It’s cool down there, innit?”

“Please tell me you’re not expecting Luna to actually reply to you,” he hears at his back, and he smiles. Luna barks happily in return, and Alex can’t help the laughter that bubbles in his chest and crawls up his throat. 

“Well, she kinda did,” he chuckles. He doesn’t turn around, comfortable sitting on the swing. Alex picks the guitar back up, and strums a melody with just a couple of fingers over the frets. “I heard you,” he says softly, as the pick plucks at the strings in a steady rhythm.

“I wasn’t exactly being quiet,” Michael steps into his line of vision, leaning in to drop a kiss on top of his messy hair. “You know I love singing, but I have no suitable voice for it.”

Alex looks up at him, jeans and white well-worn sweater, untamed curls and the glint of mischief in his bottomless hazel eyes. “What time did Isobel tell you to be by her place?” he asks, placing the guitar on the floor between his legs, and he leans forward until his chin is resting on top of the pegbox.

“She invited _us_ to lunch,” Michael replies, lips pursed in a grimace. He’s still at an arm’s distance from Alex, and the small space between them is making Alex ansty. “It’s not even noon on a Sunday, so maybe she can wait a bit longer,” he continues, crouching in front of him until he’s eye to eye with Alex. “I really wish you’d want to come with me.” The bitter tone isn’t lost to Alex, who decides not to bite the bullet. They’ve been over this issue several times, and the conversation can only end in one way – with both of them in tears about what almost happened while Max was dead on the pod. Instead, he picks up the guitar, setting up a fast pace of his fingers over the strings, melody shutting everything else out.

For a second they stay in front of each other until Michael crouches down to Alex’s level and reaches out to shuffle the black locks that Alex has let grow in a silly attempt to get back some of his old punk stylism. Michael sighs and shakes his head, allowing his fingers one last caress to Alex’s skull before pulling out.

Alex smiles when Michael puts a hand on his knee for balance. He’s always been a sucker for Michael’s touch, and he craves it in every form. The heat radiating off Michael’s palm breaches through the thin fabric of his sweatpants, burns a brand in Alex’s skin. “Will you be alright if I leave now?” Michael asks softly, eyes locked to Alex’s. Both remain silent for a second – Michael waiting on Alex to reply, Alex fixed on an astray curl that’s brushing Michael’s forehead. 

“Yeah,” Alex breathes finally, exhaling without looking away. “I have Luna to keep me company, though I think it might be the other way around.”

“You show him who’s the boss around here,” Michael commands the Beagle lazily looking up at him from her spot on the floor. He brushes his right hand over her head before focusing again on Alex. “Call me if you need anything, whenever that might be.” Michael sighs again. He walks slowly away, but he stops before reaching the few steps separating the porch from the wild around the cabin. “I just don’t get why, Alex,” he insists after what’s obviously a war between his mind and his heart. Alex doesn’t want to have this conversation, not today, not probably _ever_. They’ve tried, and he just can’t. 

“I’m not a child anymore, Guerin,” Alex pouts. He doesn’t call Michael by his last name often these days, and when he actually does it’s in the midst of banter and lightweight joking – there’s no need for antagonizing, and whenever they argue, Alex makes sure not to use the only thing that’s intrinsically Michael’s against him. At least, not anymore. 

He just can’t help it this time, because he doesn’t feel ready to face everyone who will be at Isobel Evan’s weekly lunch date – he isn’t ready to face the only person he has yet to talk to, even after so many months.

“You sure act like one when Maria’s involved,” Michael chides him, forcing a light and playful tone that does a bad job at concealing his true concern. “You’ve forgiven me, I know you have,” he insists. Alex fights the urge to smack him with the guitar. “Why can’t you forgive _her_?”

At his feet, Luna whines and rubs her tail against Alex’s left leg. When he doesn’t acknowledge her, too intent on not replying to Michael just yet – because Michael won’t understand, because the wound is still open and gaping – Luna stands on her short legs and jogs her way to where Michael is standing. She stares down at him and barks. “Traitor,” he mutters, feeling outnumbered and a little bit desperate. “You just-”

“I know you think I won’t understand,” Michael says, retracing the steps until he’s once again in front of Alex. “She used to be your best friend. Alex, she was practically your _sister_. It was _me_ who ran to her, not the other way ‘round. She misses you. I know you miss her. Why don’t you try and-”

“Because it was my fault!” Alex finally gives in, the desperation winning over the collected impersonation of himself he’s been portraying for far too long. Michael’s been able to see through the cracks, and Alex can’t help himself anymore. He blinks when he feels tears forming in the back of his eyes.

The last thing he needs now is to cry in front of Michael. 

“Why is it your fault?” Michael questions softly. He’s still standing tall before Alex, who grips the guitar tighter, using the wood as armor. “How come my mistakes are yours?”

“I wasn’t totally honest with her, okay?” Alex whispers. One of the tears manages to jump from the corner of his eye down his cheek. The feeling of the burning path cuts through his skin. He lets go of the guitar, and when he doesn’t hear the clingling of wood on wood, he knows for sure Michael’s caught it midair. “I didn’t tell her-I let her think it was one sided, that it was just _me_ , for far too long-I just-it’s my fault, why can’t you see it?” Alex scrunches his nose in disgust at himself, tears now rolling freely down his cheeks. He has to close his eyes, feeling as raw and exposed as that night when he saved Michael from himself, so he doesn’t see the alien kneeling again in front of him. He feels hands on his arms, and he flinches a bit.

Michael holds him in place for a moment before pulling him into a tight embrace, and Alex lets his anguish roam free out of his soul. He cries for all the sins he’s ever committed, for all the times he’s been the bad friend, for all the situations where he’s become the evil. For the love he’s lost in the form of a father who never loved him. For the family he’s missed when he decided on a self-imposed estrangement from Maria and Liz. He sobs and trembles and stutters into Michael’s white sweater, sure that he’s leaving a trail of tears and pain in his wake. When he moves to separate from Michael’s heat, Michael pulls him in tighter, closer, until he doesn’t distinguish his heartbeat from Michael’s.

“It’s okay,” Michael coos him after a while. “I wish you’d told me sooner,” he continues in a whisper. “I would have told you how wrong you are, and we wouldn’t have wasted so much precious time.”

“Not wrong,” Alex sniffles as he _finally_ tears himself apart from Michael. 

“You should talk to her,” Michael affirms; Alex shakes his head stubbornly. “Alex, don’t. Just, believe me. You’re not to blame for what _we_ did. I always wondered why-I mean, Maria’s your other half, I know that. I just happen to be-”

“Cosmic with me,” Alex supplies when Michael trails off.

“You have to talk to her,” Michael repeats. “Go get dressed,” he commands, picking the guitar up and helping Alex find his crutches. “I’m taking you down to Isobel’s.”

“I can’t.”

“Now that I know, Alex,” Michael begins when Alex shakes his head _again_ and refuses to budge. “How could you-for even a second-how could you get your head tangled up like this?” He’s trembling, hands in fists by his sides. “You know what? I could bring Maria here and force you two talk like the adults you’re supposed to be. I mean, jury’s still out on your adult status, though, considering.”

Alex still isn’t moving. There is a force gluing him to the wooden floor in the cabin porch. He doesn’t want to acknowledge the truth behind Michael’s words. He doesn’t want to talk to Maria because he knows he can’t bear the feeling of guilt that floods him whenever he thinks of her – which is far more than he’s ever admitted out loud to anyone, not even himself.

“I won’t go without you, Alex. You have to fix this before it’s too late,” Michael keeps on. “Maria needs her best friend, and there’s only so much Liz can do. She needs _you_. And you need her. You know you need her.”

Alex knows Michael enough by now to be sure that he’s going to wait until Alex makes up his mind and gets dressed, however long it may take him. So with a sigh he moves into the cabin and opens their closet. He doesn’t even think too much about clothes; he grabs the first jeans he can find and a plaid green and blue shirt. Putting his prosthetic on is the hardest thing he does – his hands are trembling hard enough for him to not be able to click it in place, and his eyes are so watery that he misses the latch twice before actually managing to strap it correctly.

Michael nods his approval when Alex steps out of the cabin holding one crutch to his side. They both pat Luna’s head as Michael picks her up. She’s too small yet to be left alone in the cabin, and Alex doesn’t like to leave her behind – something about his military training and the fact that Luna has quickly grown on him. They both walk slowly to the Chevy that Michael has chosen to keep despite the new and shiny SUV Alex bought first thing when he got his honorable discharge. They climb inside in silence, and the quiet follows them as Michael drives into town and through the busy streets, navigating towards Isobel’s house.

Alex stares out the window for the whole ride. Michael is humming along whatever song’s playing in the radio, breaking the silence that’s not loaded but doesn’t feel comfortable either. They don’t talk; Alex is aware that Michael’s giving him space, and although he wants to reach out and reassure his boyfriend that he’s alright, the truth is that he doesn’t know how he’s feeling. Michael hasn’t really forced him to tag along, but he doesn’t like the idea of meeting up with everyone while Maria’s also in the same room. Alex has known all along that them all as a group gathered together from time to time, be it either at Isobel’s or at Max’s, and Alex has been to a couple of reunions whenever he’s made sure Maria was out of town visiting Mimi at the care house.

As much as he wants to, he doesn’t seem to forgive the betrayal that still cuts through him like a knife whenever he thinks of the early days of the post-Noah, post-Caulfield era. Alex closes his eyes against the glass as the images of Michael and Maria hand in hand inside the Pony rush to the front of his mind. He remembers the pain he felt when he realized that Michael had sped to Maria’s side because it was easier – because her hands weren’t tainted by the blood of Michael’s relatives. Because she didn’t know about aliens, and when she found out she hadn’t cared. Because Maria had always resembled the sun while Alex had been turning into darkness. He hadn’t blamed Michael, he hadn’t really blamed her. He’d blamed himself, and his own betrayal had been too heavy to carry.

To this day he’s still learning to walk with the weight of treason over his shoulders.

Isobel’s house looks bright in the sunny light. There are a few cars scattered in the front yard; Michael parks the Chevy alongside Kyle’s Subaru and as he kills the engine he says casually, “Are you gonna be okay?”

“Bit late to ask that, don’t you think?” Alex counteracts, his hands already shaking. He presses his palms against his jeans in an attempt to calm himself. On the back seat, Luna barks happily. She’s been bouncing excitedly the whole ride, barking occasionally at the passing traffic lights as they waded into the town. “I’ll take Luna.”

“I’ll do it,” Michael offers. He saunters out of the car and opens the back door to let Luna out. The Beagle jumps out, tail wiggling, and she makes a hasty beeline for the nearest tree. She’s been to Isobel’s a handful of times, and she already has her favorite spots. 

Alex doesn’t look at Michael as they walk up to the front door and Michael knocks. He could enter without bothering, because they both have a key by now, but Michael always knocks out of politeness. Liz opens the door for them, a smile plastered on her face that only widens when she notices Alex standing half hidden behind Michael. “I’m glad you’ve come, Alex,” she greets him with a soft kiss on his cheek. “Get inside, Isobel’s freaking out about something regarding the burgers.”

“I’ll take care of it,” Michael offers as he steps into the house, followed by an unsure Alex. He hovers in the hallway for a while, until he musters up enough courage to enter the living room by the left, from where he can hear laughter and bickering. When he sets foot inside, he has a moment to take in the scene before everyone notices him and the room grows eerily silent.

Rosa is standing close to the door that leads to the patio, holding some plastic plates as an offer of help to Max, who’s carrying a full tray of plastic cutlery and cups. Liz is halfway out of the living room, silhouette cut against the crisp light as she explains something to Michael and Isobel, who’s outside looking into the room. By the chimney, Kyle is chatting up with Maria, both laughing heartily, her back to the door, until Maria turns around and sees Alex.

The world freezes. Alex has the feeling that he’s been turned upside down, his lungs seem to have forgotten how to properly function. He can’t form any words, even if he tries to set his jaw to working around sounds. 

It’s Maria who speaks up, breaking the silence and cutting right through him.

“Alex?” It’s small and unsure and it breaks Alex’s heart because he’s the one who’s made her feel that way – with his acts and his words and the shit he spewed when they last talked, when Alex was too much of a coward to actually _talk_ to her instead of taking everything for granted and running away.

He’s been hiding in plain sight ever since.

The moment is awkward enough to make everyone feel uncomfortable, if the noises Isobel’s making to usher them out of the living room and into the kitchen are anything to go by. Alex stands there, silent, head bowed down, hand on the crutch he doesn’t need anymore. He can’t look Maria in the eye, he doesn’t want to see the hurt in them, an ache he’s helped grow there. There’s a rustle of fabrics, Alex thinks it’s from Maria’s long skirt grazing the floor, and all of a sudden he’s engulfed in warmth as Maria embraces him. It takes him a moment to react, and when he lifts his arms to place them around her waist, his world finally starts spinning in the right direction.

“I’m sorry,” she’s saying all over his shirt, holding him close like she would hold a lifeline. Alex wants to scream that she’s the one affronted, not the other way around, but her tight embrace has given him a silver lining to hang onto. “I’m sorry, I wish I’d-”

“I’m sorry too,” he cuts in, letting her go enough to duck his head and give her a reassuring look. From the way her shoulders relax, Alex knows she’s willing to talk to him. “I shouldn’t have kept you in the dark about Museum Guy, about how important he was for me, and how it wasn’t, it _isn’t_ , unrequited.”

“This mess isn’t your fault, Alex,” she says bewildered. Alex has to chuckle. “What’s so funny?”

“This is as much my fault as it is yours or Michael’s,” he explains softly. “Yeah, you probably shouldn’t have kissed him. He definitely shouldn’t have started a relationship with you based on so many lies. But it was _me_ who wasn’t completely sincere to begin with. I’d like to believe that, had I told you how things really were between Michael and I, you wouldn’t have even tried something with him.”

“You know I wouldn’t’ve,” she says seriously. “I just thought-”

“I’m sorry,” he repeats, and as he says those words over and over they feel less burdened – his soul a bit more untangled from the knots keeping it pressed against a ground it doesn’t belong to.

“Me too.” Maria smiles tentatively up at him. “There’s so much we need to talk about, you know.”

“Yeah,” he concedes, pulling her close again. He plans on never letting her go out of his grasp. “But can we just leave it for later?” She nods against his shoulder, and Alex sighs in relief.

He’s been forgiven, but more important he’s on the path of forgiving himself. He knows it’ll take time, for healing wounds as deep as theirs isn’t a single day’s task, but he can feel his foot already stomping on the correct yellow-brick road. He’s on his way home.

When Michael enters the room again, followed by Isobel and Liz carrying some food trays whose smell hits Alex’s nostrils as if it’s heaven thrown down to Earth, Alex knows he’s already found home. He was just too stubborn to understand that home doesn’t mean the American dream of a fence and a life by the book. Home can be Sunday slow reunions around a table full of people to love. Home can be the sound of a guitar cutting the air while a terrible voice sings an out-of-tune song. Home can be a family chosen through time and experience, patched up in life and death, etched with fire into his skin.

They eat and they talk, running over each other in their haste to retell the stories from their childhood and the years they missed while growing up. Max lets his arm linger casually around Liz’s shoulders; Kyle and Maria jab at each other while Rosa sketches down on a napkin with one of her coloring markers. Alex lounges against Michael’s chest, relaxed enough to allow himself a bit of happiness in front of others. When someone offers him the guitar Michael’s stashed in the trunk of the Chevy while Alex had been dressing up in their room, he doesn’t hesitate. Maybe it’s time to make new memories, Alex tells himself. Maybe he can move on and start something new, good, different. _His_. 

“Do you know Alex is writing again?” Michael drops casually. Alex glares at him, but he’s secretly happy. He’s been meaning to share this with his family for eons now.

“Really?” Maria quips. She’s loosely sitting on the floor in the patio, where they all have moved to watch the sun slowly setting down in the horizon. “Something you can share with us?”

Alex hesitates if only for a brief moment before nodding. “I, uhm, I’ve been working on something. Been writing it for years.”

“Ever since we first met,” Michael supplies. The girls coo, Max raises a questioning eyebrow, but Kyle flashes Alex his most reassuring smile, and Alex can’t help his own grin.

“I could play it for you, if you want me to.”

The choir of voices drown his last doubts as he settles the guitar on his lap. Luna’s already around from her excursion through the trees in Isobel’s yard, and the whole group is staring up at him. He inhales deeply, closing his eyes, and when he opens them again, letting his breath out in one long sigh, he locks eyes with Michael and begins strumming, softly, caringly.

_You came to me in a crash landing_  
_Breathed back into life by fire_  
_Eyes locked to mine, gaze scalding_  
_Our hearts consumed in the pyre_  
_Watch as my soul sets out to find_  
_The way to flare in this bonfire_  
_War forgotten, this spark alights_  
_Commit to memory this path afire_  
_I wanna grow old with you_  
_I wanna sing all my songs to you_  
_I wanna grow old with you_  
_I wanna spend all my life with you_  
_Let me grow old with you_  
_Spend my whole life with you_  
_Let me grow old with you_  
_Sing all my songs to you_  
_You left courage back in the fray_  
_I am the one who dreams in flames_  
_We let it all just fade to gray_  
_A kiss through times still feels the same_  
_You promised you'd never look away_  
_Guess we're both liars in this game_  
_'cause I said this time I would stay_  
_But I left to hide in this heap of shame_  
_I wanna grow old with you_  
_I wanna sing all my songs to you_  
_I wanna grow old with you_  
_I wanna spend all my life with you_  
_Let me grow old with you_  
_Spend my whole life with you_  
_Let me grow old with you_  
_Sing all my songs to you_  
_And now the time’s right for us_  
_We’ve found our way back to each other_  
_And now we’ve finally stopped the hurt_  
_We’ll see the sun rise yet another day_  
_Because we’re a phoenix rising from the ashes_  
_Of the searing pain of broken hearts_  
_Shouldering the bumps and bruises thrown our way_  
_Let me show you our forever can be cosmic_  
_Let me grow old with you_  
_Spend my whole life with you_  
_Let me grow old with you_  
_Sing all my songs to you_

Home is the sound of music filling every empty space in his soul.

**et finis**

**Author's Note:**

> [Assurance Home](http://www.assurancehome.org/home.htm) exists in the Roswell area. It is a home for troubled youths who don't have anywhere else to go. You can go have a look at their webpage if you're interested. [Loveless Park](https://roswell-nm.gov/Facilities/Facility/Details/Loveless-Park-22) exists too.
> 
> Our little Beagle's name is courtesy of Hannah, who suggested it to be related to the space and the galaxies, and it had a nice Spanish ring to it as well.


End file.
